


Reprise

by KayNight



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Silent Hill Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Knowledge of Silent Hill Required, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Romance, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:27:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27404275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayNight/pseuds/KayNight
Summary: Felix is trapped. Not by the cell he has been confined to, nor the army blocking his path. But by a nightmare he cannot escape. The Invasion of Enbarr is here, and Felix is not where he should be.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 33
Kudos: 68
Collections: Dimilix Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I proudly present (holy fucking shit finally), my contribution to the Dimilix 2020 Big Bang. No knowledge of Silent Hill is necessary for reading this fic. Just sit back, read the warnings carefully, and enjoy!
> 
> This story will include graphic depictions of violence in almost every chapter. I will include content warnings for major & specific items in the ending author’s note.

He will die here, Felix realizes, for no reason other than the reaction his death will provoke. 

The sun is high in the sky, filtering through the miasma of smoke and spellwork to cast an orange haze over the city that had become a battlefield. Felix breathes it all in, a shuddering inhale to regain some sense of control before he spirals, but ends up gagging on the stench of blood and sweat that permeates the city. His lungs, along with his limbs, refuse to cooperate, making his body feel to be anyone’s but his own, propped up against a marble arch like nothing more than a sack of flour. 

It is the arch that clued Felix into his location: the South Central Square in the heart of Enbarr, and the final line of defense before the palace itself. 

But why is he  _ here _ ? Felix and Hubert both. Why would Hubert be here instead of the Palace, loyal lapdog that he is? Claude’s intel had never been wrong before, and the margin of error for his intuition was even lower. The only explanation was the variable Claude would never even consider adding to his calculations - Felix falling into the Empire’s hands like a gift from the Goddess herself. The shame is crippling . Even Claude’s paranoia gave Felix more credit than he was due. 

The question is if Claude’s paranoia gives Hubert his fair share of credit, for the man certainly deserves his reputation. Truly not even Felix’s greatest nightmares could have designed such a plot as he was now to star in. 

It is just before the South Central Square, where Dimitri’s forces will merge with the main body of the Fodlan Liberation Army. It had taken much, far too much, time to get into his thick fucking skull that having him be in the main thrust of the army through the North Central Square was absurd. His strength needed to be saved for the fight to reach the palace - and for the demonic beasts blocking their way. It is just meters from Felix, across the bridge at the bottom of the North Central Square, that the Blue Lions would reunite and Dimitri would lead them into the final fight. That is the most crucial point in the entire battle. And now Hubert lies in wait with his secret weapon, his final brillant fucking scheme to hit the Blue Lions just after they have given their all to take down the beasts. 

Perhaps it is not all that brilliant and the manipulation of man’s most base emotions is as easy as breathing to some. Perhaps for all of Felix’s assumptions about his own worth in the eyes of others, it never occurred to him that someone else may have noticed and would take advantage of how easily the lives of others can be wielded against the ones that love them. Especially those of Faerghus.

It seems that the false security provided by the Academy, that bullshit attempt to foster relations between the next generation of leaders, has fucked them over again. Their guts spilled red and raw for their enemies to chew up and digest, contemplate the taste for future use. Grief is so easily broken down and understood - and so treacherously vulnerable. 

A million and one ways it manifests, a million and one ways for it to be exploited. It does not take a genius to figure it out, no matter how much Felix wishes that were true. No, no. It is simple. This ending,  _ his _ ending, is so simple and straightforward yet Felix never saw it coming. He should have fought harder, thought quicker - done  _ anything _ and  _ everything _ to prevent this.

There is not much time left now, Felix thinks. The Lions were supposed to arrive at this point an hour ago; it is only a matter of time. He cannot see the beasts from here, not at the angle he is positioned under the arch, but he can certainly hear them, hear their ferocity grow in battle. The Lions are by no means lost without Felix, but his absence will not do them any favors. Regardless, they will make it here. They will. They _ have to.  _

Felix is spiralling now, that much is clear. Shame and terror and anger overtaking any rational thought. Not being able to move is a greater torture than anything they could have conceived. Felix needs to  _ move _ , always needs to be moving. It is only through motion that order can be brought to his thoughts, any form of coherency outside of suffocating anxiety. It is bizarre to be missing the training grounds in the middle of a battlefield. With nothing else left to do, Felix goes over it again. There is nothing more to learn from it, but what else can he do as he awaits his own execution but dwell on the past? 

It had been just past dawn when he awoke alone in a cell, stripped of his swords, feeling naked and vulnerable for it, with no knowledge of his location. For all he knew at the time, he could have been on the other side of fucking Morgaine Ravine. He had been disoriented at first, and then was very quickly consumed by fury when he remembered  _ why _ he was here. But there is no point in revisiting his capture and the events that led to it. What followed is disgraceful enough. 

Felix beat his knuckles raw on the bars of his cell, the stone wall, even clawing at the grout of the floor. In shame, self-hatred, or in the effort to escape, there is no differentiation between them. Any and every way he could think of to escape this prison was attempted, every possible scenario for his captivity was analyzed and prepared for. Felix did his utmost to grasp his situation by the throat, construct a plan - and then the guard arrived. 

Felix had stood his ground with his back pressed up against the wall of the cell, defiant and silent. He figured that if he could get the guard to come into the cell Felix would gain the advantage; the width of the cell was barely enough to allow for the drawing of the axe at his hip, much less it’s wielding. 

Felix knows he can take on a whole army with the right sword - but all he had then was the broadaxe outside the cell, the filthy pile of straw he woke up in, and the clothes on his back. And so, he decided to go for the axe. His plan fell into place then - get a weapon in his hands, get out of the cell, and get the fuck back to the Lions. 

All of that planning had been well and good - and then the guard opened his mouth to reveal yellowed teeth and spat out those words. Felix’s vision went  _ red _ . No matter how many times those same words had passed Felix’s own lips, dominated his thoughts - to hear them from  _ this piece of imperial shit _ \- 

A chance to externalize his guilt, his anger, his disgust - when had Felix ever passed up on an opportunity to do that? Never. That is how he ended up here in the first place, and still,  _ still, _ without a moment’s thought he lunged at the bars, tried to get up in the man’s face - and his fate was sealed. The guard shot his arm through the bars to extend his reach beyond Felix’s head. 

It had been stupid. So  _ fucking _ stupid getting baited like that. Unsurprising from Felix, predictable even. Dimitri had always been his weakness. Everything happened so quickly after that. 

A massive hand had come round to grab at the base of Felix’s skull, pulling his hair tight and yanking him forwards. His chin was shoved between the iron bars of his cell, jaw forced open at the pressure. Felix tried to jerk out of the hold, to snap his teeth shut - but it was too late, a vial of foul liquid was poured down his throat and that was that. He had choked, eyes even stinging at the burn of it scraping down his throat.  _ Pathetic _ .

The pressure at the back of his skull had abruptly stopped and Felix fell to his knees, spluttering and hacking. He had tried to shove a finger down his throat, to retch up the poison - his instincts did not fail him there at least - but the guard was quicker. Thick fingers wrapped around the heavy chain that bound Felix’s wrists together, and with a sharp jerk, he was brought to the floor with a crash. 

Felix’s ribs had met the stone floor with a crack and blinding pain - fractured at the least, broken at the worst - his breath left him instantly with a wheeze and his wits had followed almost as pitfully. Too stupid, too slow. Felix Hugo Fraldarius, then dragged across the floor like a pig to slaughter. 

The world became nothing but darkness and dizzying flashes of torchlight. The minutes had stretched to hours, through the long corridor of the dungeon, up a set of spiral stone stairs - each ledge a bludgeon to his aching chest, a hammer to his knees. All of this had passed merely as color and pain, ringing in his ears and cotton in his mouth. It was not until they emerged into the sunlight, after however many corridors and checkpoints and swarms of soldiers marching by in nothing but a cascade of black and thunder, that their location became known to him. 

It was unmistakable, even with his vision fucked - dripping with gold, adorned in red and black. The ancient palace of Enbarr, the final fortification of Emperor Edelgard’s reign. Inanely, Felix had thought about how he beat Dimitri to it. Somehow, it felt like Felix’s loss.

The guard had slung him into a cart after that, like a plague victim for mass burial, surrounded by the clatter of armaments with the sole purpose of killing his friends. Body numb, all Felix could do was stare at the sky above - a clear summer blue, a smattering of white clouds, and the sun settling in comfortably for the day. Then,  _ darkness _ . 

Voluminous, black clouds sweeping in from the north. Smoke, magic refuse. The invasion had begun. 

Then, dropped at the arch to await his fate. Wrists and ankles shackled, chest collapsing in on itself, half blind - Felix could not even curse Hubert when he came to inform Felix that this would be his end. Could say  _ nothing _ , when Hubert commented idly about how remarkable it was the Duke Fraldarius would die twice in the same war. Felix could barely lift his head to meet his gaze despite the righteous fury burning up his soul. Felix is going to die here, and it is not even his death that matters - but rather who will witness it,  _ how _ Felix will die. 

As a child, Felix had feared death. 

Some children fear their own, others fear that of their family. Felix could not remember the loss of his mother, and there was no way his father or brother would ever leave him. There was nothing that could take them away from him. 

And so, the death that Felix feared was his own. He did not want to die. 

Nightmares would rip him from his sleep: taken by sickness like his mother at his birth, being thrown from his horse and having his skull cracked in two, being lost in the endless white winter. 

A guard or a maid would do their best to soothe him from each nightmare he awoke from, but no comfort could be provided until his father or brother arrived. Felix became so accustomed to others wiping away his tears that at some point along the way he stopped bothering to do it himself. 

After The Tragedy -

And does that phrase not preface far too much in his life. 

‘After The Tragedy’, as his life will forever be cleaved in two by circumstances beyond his control. As if no decision he ever makes will shift the course of his life as a single day beyond his reach. 

But that is merely the reality of this world, Felix came to realize during the war. For all that the death of his brother felt like the end of all things, it is the end of all things for someone everyday. Felix brings the end of all things every time he wields his blade on the battlefield. He is the bringer of circumstances beyond the control of families he has never met, the bringer of a  _ before _ and  _ after _ that they had no say in.

And now, his deliverance. Hubert is ready for him, it seems. The battle has drawn closer, the roar of the beasts reverberating through the air, the marble vibrating at his back. The Lions are coming. Felix is hauled to his feet by guards on either side, dragged into the open square behind the arch. 

Hubert awaits him, expression placid, leather fists folded politely behind him. How Felix hates this bastard with every fiber of his being. And there are the Lions now, behind him. Crossing the bridge - Felix can almost hear them, if he could just turn his head he thinks he might be able to see them - 

The opportunity is lost. Hubert grabs him by the throat and hoists him up so that his feet dangle, his hair falling about his face. Felix did not know Hubert had the strength in him. Felix rages against this new prison, but his body does not move, he screams, but nothing moves his lips. This is it. 

Felix hears Dimitri, finally. A roar of rage that rips across the battlefield and cleaves Felix’s soul from his body. Felix cannot look, cannot twist his head in Hubert’s iron grip - he will die here, and not even for one last time is he going to see - 

And then Hubert begins to speak. 

First, it is fluid filling up his lungs, then electric shocks to his nerves, his limp body begins twitching and jerking uncontrollably - it will be a minute, it will only take a minute Hubert had told him - 

_ Always so scared, Felix.  _

for his eyes to roll back and tears pour down his cheeks, for saliva and blood and sour bile to overflow past his lips - 

_ Always so quick to cry, Felix - what are those tears going to solve, Felix? _

He is choking, he cannot breath, vision going black, screams of his name ringing in his ears - 

_ Nothing, they’re going to solve nothing. In the end, your strength was as useless as your tears.  _

and all he can think is don’t watch I do not want you to watch I don’t want you to see me like this I don’t want to die  _ please don’t let me die please not yet _ \- 

“You haven’t changed at all.” 

Felix wakes up in his cell, screaming, and vomits all over the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Emetophobia
> 
> Thank you very much for reading! This will be the longest fic I have ever written, and will be the only legit multi-chapter fic I have ever completed. I cannot thank V (@bumblevetr) enough for being an amazing partner, contributing massively to the plot and design of this story, and for her absolutely gorgeous art that will appear soon! Huge thanks to my beta and cheerleader Rin (@wintersrose616) whose proofreading and feedback kept me adrift in an endless sea of what the fuck save me. This fic never would have been as good as it is, much less completed, without them. Additional thanks to my poor IRL housemates who proofread for me, acted out getting murdered in different fashions, and saved many a scene with their creative thinking. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter and will continue to enjoy the rest of this first part of Reprise. If you did, please drop me a comment. Your thoughts and feedback mean the world to me, especially after what now must have been like six months??? Of working on this??? 
> 
> Hit me up on Twitter (@cntrlvaneau) for more Dimilix! RTs of my fic posts are much appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end author’s note. They contain light spoilers for the chapter.

What the fuck. What the fuck -  _ what the fuck _ . 

Straw underneath him, stone underneath that. Air easing through his lungs, limbs that respond to his request. A dark dungeon, illuminated by torchlight. Felix is back - how the fuck is he - 

Felix scrambles to his feet only to fall face first down as he forgets the weight around his ankles, his bound wrists. His yelp of surprise is cut off as his nose smashes brutally against the stone floor, instantly breaking it with a rush of heat and blood. That is how the guard finds him, writhing on the floor, face covered in blood, half conscious from pain and shock. Felix is silent as he is dragged out, compliant when he is fed the poison. It is only till Hubert gets his skeletal hand wrapped around Felix’s throat that he realizes what he has done - the life he could have just thrown away - 

Felix dies two more times before his reality sinks in. Once more until he accepts it. 

But it is not until Felix chooses an end for himself, that he decides to do something about it.

Those first few deaths, he was nothing but a lifeless doll. A nightmare, damnation, or an illusion - all seemed too otherworldly to be as grounded as this reality was. The pain never lessened with each death, and choking to death on his own vomit became no less of an indignity. The guard did not bother with his insults after the first time, as each death since has left Felix a crumpled heap on the floor of his cell, rotting alongside the hay beneath him.

But this time when the guard touches Felix - when he  _ dares _ touch him, grabbing at Felix’s upper arm - Felix smashes his shoulder into the guard’s knees, head between his legs, and swiftly fells the man. A weak groan is the only noise the man lets out after the crack of his skull hitting the floor. Felix wastes not a second, immediately crawling up and across the man’s prone form to grab at his head, ignoring the drag of the shackles on his wrists, and lifts. Teeth bared, eyes wild, all Felix wants is for him to stop, for all of this to stop, stop, STOP -  _ STOP --  _

Only when the other guards drag Felix away from the body, from the shattered mess of flesh and brain and bone that remains of the man’s head, does Felix even realizes what he has done. 

Felix will not let them take him away again. He will never die by Hubert’s hands again. He thrashes in their grip, swings his fists, bites anything he can get his teeth on, rages and  _ rages _ . Then, the youngest of the guards, so young he must not even be sixteen - face full of fear and hands trembling, plunges his sword deep into Felix’s belly. As Felix bleeds out, he hears how that sixteen year old gets ripped to shreds for this meaningless death, how now  _ he’ll have to report this directly to Lord Vestra _ \- but Felix is too busy counting, too busy sizing them, too busy  _ preparing _ \- and then his vision goes grey, then black. He wakes in his cell with a gasp, shaking and shuddering and just so fucking angry. It’s hot and fierce and oh so welcome. He missed this feeling, missed being consumed by it, burning out every thought in his head in favor of the target of his rage - 

“I am not mad,” Felix chants to himself, a mantra to make the words be true. At first he had assumed he was. But this cannot be, “No, no,  _ no, _ ” Felix refuses to let it be. He cannot, will not - “There is no reason for me to go mad,” Felix adds,  _ as if madness is derived from reason _ , he thinks.

“This is a curse,” he announces to no one, because curses can be broken, even if madness cannot be cured. All Felix needs to do is to get back to the Lions. Someone will know what to do, someone will fix it. He won’t be trapped here forever, he refuses. 

“Need to get rid of the guard,” a mutter, hand tugging at his hair, fingers gripping at his scalp, “he needs to die, needs to die  _ quietly _ .” Then the others. At least three more.  _ At least  _ three, because Felix would be personally insulted if they did not have five at the least for him - not to mention for the rest of the prisoners. 

Felix pauses. There is not a single other soul he can see in the gloom of the dungeon, which is composed entirely of iron wrought bars between cells and barring them from the pathway. Nothing like the stonework and private cells of Fhirdiad’s dungeon;  _ keep them isolated and keep them cold - never let them get comfortable _ . _ Frostbite will not kill them before the King does _ . The Enbarr’s dungeons are practically airy in comparison. 

_ Fuck, _ why had he not paid more attentioned to the layout of the dungeons? Why had he not noted the location of the guard station, their patrol routes?

Part of Felix knows the absurdity of this line of self-punishment. He was being dragged to his death, and he knew this. No world his feet left behind was of concern to him in that moment, only the fate that lay ahead. He had no use for knowledge of a place he would never see again. He was  _ supposed _ to never see again. How was he to know that to here he would return, to this hell he cannot escape? The other part of him has never been generous with his failings. 

Felix lets out a low growl, tugging his hair now, sharp pinpricks of pain keeping him present, “Focus,  _ fucking focus,”  _ he needs to take down the guard -  _ who is already at his cell, “ _ fuck.” 

There is definitely a better way to do this. But that describes Felix’s whole life. He rises to his feet, listens to the guard’s vitriol one more time - and takes the bait. But more importantly, the guard does too. The guard reaches in to grab at Felix, but Felix steps back just as quickly, snatching the guard’s wrist and snapping him full body against the unforgiving metal of the cell. The guard’s other hand, clutching the vial of poison, crunches against the bars, the glass shattering in his palm and poison pooling in the wounds. The man opens his hand reflexively, and Felix goes for the kill. A single glass shard ripped from calloused flesh, then swiped across a vulnerable throat. From there, all it takes is a quick search through the dying man’s tunic, then a key in Felix’s hand and he is out of his cell. Finally, free on his own terms. One down. At least three more to go. Felix’s hands and feet are still bound, so the odds are against him taking on the remaining three.  _ At least _ three. He eyes the guard’s axe, and debates it for only a moment before deciding it is better than his fists. 

There is almost certainly a guard station at the entrance to the dungeon, and that should be where he can get rid of these chains. To his left, the cells continue on, about a dozen at least on either side of the hallway. Before him, only a handful and a great iron door. Beyond that - more death and hopefully his path to freedom. As luck would have it, the door should have muffled any sound of his violent escape. Which begs the question of how Felix attracted the remaining guards’ attention. For how long was he…? Felix does not want to think about it, he does not want to think about anything, really, so he strides his way up to the door, swings it open and the axe at the same time. 

His instincts were right - the guard was positioned to the left of the door, since the hinges were on the right. But he was  _ not _ right about the guards height. The woman had about half a head on him, and now Felix’s axe embedded in her collar bone, rather than her skull. 

Well,  _ fuck _ . The guard slowly turns his head to look at Felix, who just looks back. If Sylvain were here, he undoubtedly would have made a pithy comment. Instead, Felix uses the firmly lodged axe as a hook, yanks the guard through the doorway. Before the guard can react, he pulls the weapon free and decapitates her. Two down. 

Felix leaves the axe in its new home and does not bother taking her nasty looking spiked club. If he is going to use something without a blade, Felix might as well be using his fists. 

Felix tells himself to wait outside what he assumes is the guardroom's door to get a headcount, but the reality is he needs a breather. Two of the sloppiest kills he has made and neither took place on a field of battle. Luckily, those beyond the door are some noisy bastards. Bored guards always are. 

“They’ll get their asses whipped like an Alliance whore, I tell you. The Emperor will stop them right in their tracks.”

Heavy smoker by the sound of it, probably middle aged or older. Overconfident, which will come in handy. Probably one of the big ones Felix remembers. Also will come in handy. Felix has been taking down guys bigger than him for over a decade. 

“Aye, I’d hope so. But my sister’s kid was stationed in Deidru, barely made it back with all his limbs attached.” 

Weary, higher voice, but does not sound much younger. Sounds a bit like his father. 

“Your sister’s kid Colin? What a wuss. He’s not any measure of a fighting force. He’d run from our rats.”

Okay - so three at least; these two plus the kid that killed him. 

“They’ve chased us back across the continent - how can you think we’ll be coming out this alive?” 

A fourth one. Felix hopes the rest of the army’s morale is just as shit as this person’s. Do them all a favor. 

“That’s treason there, Shiel. I’d shut your fucking trap if I were you before someone that isn’t us hears your pathetic whimpering.”

“You sent a letter telling your folks to get out of the city not a week ago - before Merceus even fell!” 

“Shut up, you ugly fuck - it’s for my ma’s health. City air isn’t good for her. Got nothing to do with the invasion.” 

There are at least four guards, it seems like the kid stayed silent the whole time - hopefully no one else did. So six in total before Felix got started. With a deep breath and his teeth gritted, Felix pushes the door open with the groan. No one looks up. All four of them - Felix was right - are seated around a table playing cards, too focused on the healthy pot between them to check just who it was. 

“Oi, Caterino, is that Faerghus fuck taken care of?”

Wrong guess. 

“Caterino’s dead.”

They freeze. Felix does not. He strides into the room, full confidence, one on four, unarmed. 

“Well?” 

Felix throws a punch at the guard who charges at him first, breaking his nose with a sharp blow, then slightly opening his hand to smash the heel of it in a strike upwards against the shattered bones. 

Felix is no Bergliez, it is not an instant kill, but it gets the man out of the fight quick enough. 

In one fluid move, Felix unsheathes the stunned guard’s sword and bisects the next one coming at him. Whatever spell the mage has been casting dies with him. It is quick work after that. Few can stand against Felix with a blade. 

The youngest he saves for last, bringing his blade crashing down to embed it in the boy’s skull. The kid dies instantly, frozen forever in crossed eyed shock at the blade protruding from his forehead. Felix cannot avoid the rush of hot guilt that washes over him - but then he remembers the blade buried in his stomach. This kid is just as capable of murder as he is. 

Felix temporarily leaves the sword in while he hurriedly disrobes the boy. He had sized them all upon his entrance to the room, and decided this one would be his best fit. The blow had been quick and clean, leaving the armor and garments untouched by blood. The thick ring of keys sitting in the middle of their pot of silvers takes care of his chains - and, as luck would have it, there are his belts and scabbards as well, likely to sweeten the pot. Attired in the guard’s uniform, Felix should be able to make it past the guard at the top of the staircase and into the palace. At least let him go unnoticed long enough to obtain an idea of the layout of this corner of the palace.

Felix manages to gain a better understanding of the palace. Unfortunately, this knowledge does absolutely nothing to increase his chances of escaping the palace grounds alive and in fighting shape. 

He can look like he has somewhere to be, somewhere he belongs - and he will go unquestioned, but only up to a certain point. The guard disguise only gets him so far, as there is no reason for a palace guard to be beyond his authority. The instant assumption once he gets beyond the palace gates is that he is a deserter, which is just as much of a death sentence as being accurately identified. Felix found that out the hard way. Having your back riddled with arrows is not an enjoyable way to die. 

Furthermore, Felix has a limited window of time till the bodies of the guards are discovered in the dungeons, and alarms are raised across the entire army that the Duke Fraldarius is back.

Felix is a skilled swordsman. One of, if not the, best swordsman on the continent at this point. That does not mean he can cut his way through the Empire’s final layer of defense by his lonesome. He is confident, not cocky. At least not anymore. 

The logical next move would be to acquire a soldier’s uniform, blend in with one of the battalions deploying further into the city, and work his way from there. But it is no easy feat to isolate a single soldier from a battalion, and there appear to be a limited number moving from the palace to the city. 

Felix can feel himself growing sloppier with each setback. He is not more brutal in his kills - but no guilt, no hesitation remains. It would be helpful, if each kill he made stuck past his own death. But alas, he has never known the Goddess to be gracious. Before he decides to fuck it and see how many imperials he can take with him on his way to the frontlines, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Sylvain reminds him to look beyond the next opponent. For once, Felix listens. Likely because Sylvain is not actually around to witness it. 

The answer comes to Felix. The East Watchtower. If he is going to make it through the city, make it through the hordes of imperial soldiers - then he needs to know what he is up against. There is a guardhouse adjacent to the tower, built into the curtain wall on the canal dividing the palace grounds from the central square. That is his access point. 

Felix enters the guardhouse unquestioned - until he unsheathes his sword and removes five more soldiers from the Empire’s ranks. Then through the backdoor into the hall connecting the guardhouse with the tower. With perfect timing, the door to the tower stairwell opens to an archer, likely coming to relay an update if he was leaving his post. 

A mere ten feet between them, Felix dives and tucks into a tight roll, startling the man who takes a surprised step backwards in time with Felix unfurling. Felix drags his sword up to the heavens to rend the bow arm from the soldier’s body - and with a twist of Felix’s wrist, his head. With not a glance at the carnage he has left behind him, Felix makes his way to the foot of the stairs and up. He takes the stairs two at a time, knowing he only has so much time before the body is discovered. 

The atmosphere notably shifts around Felix as he ascends, the arrow slits feeding him slices of sky and a breeze off the canal. The air is still and stagnant below, but up here it lessens somewhat, if just by the appearance of being above the smog. It would not rain today, but tomorrow; an advantage and disadvantage for holding the city. The Liberation Army would only have this one clear day and night to solidify their position, and use the weather against anyone seeking to undermine it. 

Before then, in just a few hours time, this tower will become the palace’s first defense, each slit with its own archer, posed to take out their flyers, the masses of the Liberation Army as they cross the palace bridges. The ascent burns Felix’s lungs at the pace he has set, but he can feel the tease of wind at his hair signalling the end of his climb. The wood door to the lookout is rotting from rain and this wretched humidity, and only gives the most pathetic of protests as he pushes it open. 

With the element of surprise on his side, it is easy enough to put a burst of momentum in his step and shove the first guard he spots right over the ledge of the tower. Felix catches just a glimpse of confusion and dawning terror on the woman’s expression as she plummets to her death. 

Felix slashes the other guard from breast to opposite hip, sliding his blade cleanly between rib bone and through spine and organ, pivoting on his heel before he could witness the descent of the two halves of the once whole man he had created. The sight of gore and bloodshed no longer phases Felix, but the view in front of him nearly does. 

Children of Faerghus are raised not for the possibility of war, but for the inevitably of it. Not only the assumption that Faerghus will strike back, but strike first. Faerghus under the late King was an imperial nation, a Kingdom bent on conquest and consumption. This is not the first time Felix has seen a city under siege, nor a capital. Yet, it remains a sight unlike any other. 

What few memories Felix possessed of Enbarr before this day would paint an entirely different landscape nearly lost to time and the broad brush strokes of war. Dorothea’s beloved Opera and only a few other landmarks spark any recognition for Felix from his few visits as a child. 

Felix wonders how many of them will remain after today, how much of the city will remain standing. If Dimitri had his way, it would be pristine -  _ the war was not the choice of the people, _ he had said last night, words firm, brooking no argument. Felix unthinkingly sniped back immediately -  _ regardless of whether or not they started it, they saw to finish it.  _

_ Shall we poll the city before we lay siege, then?  _ Sylvain had suggested, voice deceptively light,  _ figure out public opinion and then decide which neighborhoods filled with imperialists would be safe to raze?  _

_Do not imply I am suggesting a massacre,_ _Sylvain_ , Felix had spat, furious, _I am saying it is madness to risk the whole invasion, to risk bringing an end to this war, because the Boar refuses to use siege weaponry in a siege._ Dimitri’s smile had been tight, tone cold - _Ah, yes well you see, Felix, I am mad. So madness seems well-suited to my command._ And then just an hour later - 

A distorted roar shatters Felix’s reverie and carves chills down his spine. He jerks violently, cursing as he smashes his knee against the outer ledge of the tower. Demonic beasts. Three - 

“Three demonic beasts?  _ Three fucking-” _ Felix chokes on his own gasp, there are not three. There are  _ more _ . Two more beasts, waiting in the wings to provide reinforcements when the time comes. The Lions have to face  _ five _ demonic beasts and  _ Felix has not even managed to cross the river _ . 

What the fuck has he been doing this whole time? Why is he still here, why the fuck is he here in the first place? Felix has  _ abandoned _ them - 

He frantically takes in the layout of the city before him, knuckles white where they grip stone. He notes the height of the sun in the sky - midmorning. The Liberation Army should be reaching the upper east perimeter of the Central Square at this point. Sure enough, it appears they are engaged just above the square - where their forces will split up for a quasi-pincer attack. 

The Imperial forces are concentrated entirely on the east side of the area, conveniently leaving their western flank, and almost half the Central Square, for Felix to exploit. This time he will cross the river. 

There is no backtracking from here, as with all certainty Felix knows reinforcements will arrive within minutes. That messenger was expected and he never arrived. Felix will not survive if he turns back. There is no point turning back anyway, he has acquired what he came for. With his quest completed for now and with no way to accomplish the next, Felix indulges in the urge that has been clawing at him since he first laid eyes upon the city. 

And so, Felix looks for him. It is impossible not to, despite the seeming absurdity of scanning a city of hundreds of thousands, besieged by nearly as many in the colors of his country, of his rightful King.

It is almost unnerving how easy it is to find him. But Felix knew it would be.

Dimitri made himself a target long before he had Ingrid’s pegasi battalion guarding his perimeter. The vanguard was his place, the lance of his people, he would acquiesce to nothing less. Felix should be there, he  _ needs  _ to be there. Felix he can’t stand here waiting, thinking about this, _ he needs to get down there _ \- 

Felix thinks about Edelgard in the throne room, the hundreds of soldiers lining the hallways of the palace. He grinds his teeth, hisses a breath through them. The stone cuts into his fingers. At least Dimitri has always borne the brunt of his decisions, if not necessarily how Felix would like. 

According to Dimitri, any kill that was made by a member of the Liberation Army of Fodlan, of  _ Dimitri’s _ army, should be one he could have made himself. 

It is fucking stupid, risking Fodlan’s future, risking all their futures, because Dimitri refuses to let anyone else bear this responsibility, but it is far more stupid that an entire continent’s future rests on the shoulders of one man. 

Gilbert had pleaded with Dimitri, nearly begged him to remain at the command post - Felix wondered for a moment if his father would have too, before realizing the absurdity of that thought. Rodrigue never asked Dimitri to stay behind - never thought to, because any burden a Blaiddyd chose is one a Fraldarius would bear. 

Footsteps echo up from the stairwell, a lot of them. Felix hopes they trip on their urgency, right off the side of the fucking tower. He takes one last look at the spread of the field - the demonic beasts lying in wait for his friends, the swath of imperials closing rank - and climbs the ledge.

It is not as tall as a Gautier watchtower or the spires of Garreg Mach, but the sheer immensity of the moment playing out hundreds of feet below him makes Felix feel like he is at the apex of the world. As if this is the greatest peak, and there is nothing left but the great fall.

He will die on impact. 

(He does not. His ribs break and splinter and pierce his lungs, but without mercy miss his heart - water fills his lungs, fills his head white and soft and bright - 

“Sometimes, Felix, I feel as though you only speak just so that you may disagree.”

A hand in the air, unyielding and instantaneous shuts Felix’s mouth not a second after he has opened it. For the first time in many years, all it takes is a gesture to bring him to heel. 

“No matter what I say, I cannot please you. You tell me to not let myself be used. I say I will carve a path forward to the future with my own hands. You say I should not be working for the ideals of the dead, but scorn me as idealistic for wanting to do all that I can for the living.”

Dimitri gives Felix no time to reply, not a breath for indignation or denial or defense. He wields his fury better than he has any lance, and Felix is unable to look away. Felix has one moment to consider, despite himself, how glorious Dimitri is, how finally confidence bleeds from every word past his lips, steels his spine and his gaze. 

And then the moment is over.

“Is the reality perhaps, Felix, that you stand not for anything, but wish rather, to tear down everything? In that case,” voice cold as ice, barren as winter, as unwelcome as the first frost that kills the last crops - “might I suggest you switch sides?”

Felix unsheathes his sword. 

There is nothing in the world separating them but two meters of distance and twenty-three years of memories. There is ringing in Felix’s ears, red in his vision. Two meters of distance, three paces. Bile rising in his throat, cool steel in his grip.

A minute passes, an hour. 

Felix flings his sword down in the dirt at Dimitri’s feet, turns on his heel, and leaves.

Dimitri does not stop him.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Suicide (Felix non-explicitly kills himself to reset the time loop, but he does not reflect on the action as suicide, but as a means to an end) 
> 
> FIRST PIECE OF V's (@bumblevetr) ART!! An absolutely gorgeous BONUS piece that she whipped up. Only the beginning!! [Check out her post here & praise her!!](https://twitter.com/Bumblevetr/status/1324521042803642368?s=20)
> 
> Comments are deeply appreciated! Find me on twitter @cntrlvaneau.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end author’s note. They contain light spoilers for the chapter.

When Felix’s eyes flash open to take in the dim lighting of his cell, choking down desperate gasps of murky air and patting his now intact chest, it’s with Dimitri’s words still ringing in his ears. 

As his breathing slows, Felix settles a hand firmly over his chest, pressing down against his sternum. It aches, tightly woven and making it difficult to settle himself. He rubs thoughtlessly at the spot, pushing at the grooves of his ribs, trying to fit himself back together, in so many more ways than one. 

No matter how many lives he has lived since first awakening in this cell, it has only been hours since he abandoned his sword at Dimitri’s feet, since he left the camp, left to scream into the dark of night with every intention of coming back, of getting through another day just one more day even though it would never be over,  _ they will never get to rest -  _

He wasn’t ready - _is not_ ready for what comes next, none of them are. 

It is hard enough to fight a war with the lives of everyone you care about _and_ the fate of an entire fucking continent on the line - but to know that this is merely the beginning and that there are even more ways to fuck this up in peace than ever imagined during war... 

War is entirely about destruction - of lives, crops, infrastructure, dynasties, entire societies and countries. For five years, Felix’s sole purpose has been to destroy - and to be the best at it. Still, it is a common misconception that rebuilding only begins once the war ends, a transition as smooth as the seasons. The truth is, if you start the recovery process when the final blow falls, then you have already started the next war. 

If your plan to end this war does not take into account how to stop the next one, you are a  _ fucking _ fool. His father taught him that, though he may have used different words. 

It is for this reason that the Fraldarius Estate provided such significant financing for the Officers Academy at Garreg Mach, the greatest investment in Fodlan’s peaceful future ever made. It failed - quite  _ spectacularly  _ \- and in such a personal and unforgettable manner it was difficult for anyone to imagine an innovation that would succeed where their forefathers’ did not. 

Difficult, but not impossible. 

Especially not so when a certain quartet crammed themselves around a table every night at camp on the way to Enbarr, candles burning out and being replaced just as quick as their inkwells and quills. 

It was Felix’s unofficial job to sit in the corner of their council, polish his sword, and provide input whenever anyone got particularly carried away - usually, Dimitri.  _ Almost always, _ Dimitri. 

Annette was smart, as much of an idealist as Dimitri, but so thorough with her research and still coming into her own in the realm of policy that it was both unfair and unreasonable to challenge her. Sylvain received his fair share of ribbing, but he bore it well, as he always had, and was the pragmatist faction along with Claude. It was rare that Felix challenged Claude, not because he did not feel as if it was his place, as Felix rarely found a place he determined to not be within his dominion, but because Claude was all knives. 

It was disconcerting, to have a debate - a discussion, as Claude would call it - with the man, because he would pick apart every aspect of Felix’s argument and turn it over in his mouth till it dissolved like sugar. Felix is a confident man, but Claude has the unique ability to make him feel terribly inadequate. 

Especially when he and Dimitri fall in line on an idea - as they had on the plan for ensuring lasting peace on the continent: the active participation of citizens in the political system, regardless of any of their identity beyond reaching the age of maturity. 

All citizens above the age of fifteen would have the ability to contribute to the collective decision making of the continent in a parliamentary system. An endgame unlike any Fodlan has ever seen, which would take decades upon decades of preparation - but the foundations must be laid now, must be spread evenly across each country to ensure the eventual transition. 

For weeks, Felix had been chipping away at their plan, tearing into each and every little flaw he could find. Felix is not entirely sure why he does it, why he picks at the scabbing wound of his relationship with Dimitri. When each day gives it opportunity to heal, he claws away at it each night. 

For sanity and rationality, Felix insists, and he believes to a certain extent, what he contributes must be said, if not necessarily in the way he says it. But when has he ever minded his words? 

The night before the invasion,  _ last night _ , it all came to a head. Logic dictated that they all needed rest, but none pretended they would get any. Their tasks were endless - updating their assault strategy with new intelligence from their scouts, checking that supply lines were operating, ensuring that no message and no person left Enbarr unaccosted. But as the tasks were delegated and the shadows grew long, the question of the future beyond tomorrow was inescapable. 

Looking back, of course such a discussion on such a night would end far differently than any before.  _ Of course _ Felix would push and  _ of course _ Dimitri would push back. How hard was the variable neither accounted for. 

“I know you trust the nobility and the Church as little as I do, Felix, so who is it that you propose to rule the country? The merchant class? So that our lives are shaped entirely around the pursuit of profit? Bandits and warlords, so the people continue to cower in fear? Or perhaps no one - the true life of a mercenary, let us all become sellswords and see how quickly we can kill each other off.”

“I fail to see how stating the simple fact that the people are not properly equipped to make the decisions necessary to  _ run an entire continent _ means I am proposing anarchy.” 

“No, you are proposing absolutely nothing - only attacking everything. But for every attack, there is a defense that you refuse to consider. If they do not have the proper ability and information to make informed decisions, then it is a fault of our education system. We must establish universal education for children, build schools in every town and universities in every city.” 

“And pay for that  _ how _ ?”

“Tax the nobility, who for once can pay their fair share.”

“After reconstruction? Reparations for the war? How much will they be willing to part with before they take up arms? Then what will you do,  _ boar _ , put them down too?” 

Felix cares not to once again recall what happened next. How strange, that memory is now forever tinged with the taste of canal water on the back of his tongue, iron and stone heavy in his gut, rather than the glow of sunset on Dimitri’s hair, the way Felix’s blade shone when he unsheathed it. 

No, no,  _ no _ \- no more dwelling on what has been done. He will not get lost in it, not just as he is growing used to this torment, used to each bout as if this were nothing more than a tournament at the Academy. Familiar opponents and familiar territory, the burn of a fight and the escapable destiny of repeating those fights, whether on the training grounds or the battlefield. This is simply the breath before a match, the moment of peace before the first strike, before the chase to first blood. It is his fate that first blood is now his death, but Felix has always been up for a challenge. 

He is just not  _ sure _ how to win this tournament. That is… that is the issue here. How to be victorious - what is it this curse wants of him? Is it simply to survive past this day? But what if it resumes once again, what if he returns to the company of his friends, they seize Enbarr and then he once again - 

No point, no  _ fucking _ point thinking like that. They will fix it. They will set it right. The Professor came back from the dead. Certainly they can stop Felix from doing so. 

Victory over Edelgard was secured. Life after her was not. That is why Felix needs to get out of here, get on the battlefield, and return to the Blue Lions. No matter what Dimitri has said or done, the fact remains that he is the best hope for this shithole of a continent, and if he falls in this final battle the power vacuum will be devastating. Dimitri  _ needs _ Felix.

Felix grits his teeth and shifts as he hears approaching footsteps. The sound pulls him back to the unfortunate present.

One last breath. The guard is here. Grab him. Smash his head against the bars. Vial shatters. Grab a shard, slash throat. Keys drop. Grab keys. 

Grab keys.  _ Grab keys -  _

A peal of childish laughter, glittering eyes in the darkness, golden tresses shining in torchlight. The keys are out of his reach, kicked out Felix’s reach,  _ there is a child in the dungeon who has kicked the keys out of his reach _ \- and  _ stomped _ on his hand -

Felix lets out an undignified yelp of shock and pain and stares gobsmacked into the gloom of the dungeon. Mocking laughter and the rapid fall of footsteps fade into the dark, and Felix presses himself up against the bars, trying to get closer, to go after him - 

The name spills past his lips before Felix can help himself, before he can process what has happened, what his very eyes have shown him.

“Dimitri!” 

The keys are beyond his reach, the rumble of guards coming around the corner - this is wrong. 

How absurd it is, to feel as anything may be wrong amidst this time that flows endlessly into itself. But this is  _ wrong _ , everything about this is wrong - 

Felix pays little heed to being dragged out of his cell, to being drugged, to once again being  _ killed _ . 

Felix would have been amused at the almost unnerved look Hubert gave him before he choked the life out of Felix. Disturbed almost. Felix could imagine the thoughts running through Hubert’s head. How could a man look so distracted upon his death? With the screams of his comrades and friends descending upon him? 

Well, the answer, Hubert, is madness. Because to Felix, madness was a fate worse than death. Felix had assumed that this was a curse, an ancient and terrible curse of sorts, but - 

Is he going mad, just as Dimitri had? Has. Is? 

Felix is shivering when he wakes in his cell. He curls in on himself, shuddering, gasping for breath. He does not, he cannot - Felix  _ refuses _ to go mad. 

He wants nothing more than this reality he has been given, than this reality he has struggled through for two decades without respite. He wants no false escape in the form of those he has lost; wants no excuse to face anything but the world with a blade in his hand. 

Maybe this is a punishment? 

Some sort of divine fucking punishment. Felix will give anything for this to be some sort of curse, or punishment, whatever fate sees fit  _ as long as he is not mad _ \- and is that not a thought? 

How easily he acquiesces to fate in the face of fear. He cannot,  _ will not _ give in, he refuses. This is  _ not  _ madness. This is a curse, playing with his memories, he just needs to get out of here. It is the dungeons, something is wrong with this place. 

“This changes  _ nothing _ ,” Felix hisses, sharp and fierce and sounding so much more certain than he feels as he rises to his feet, “All I need to do is escape. That is it.” 

The guard does not look impressed. The expression does not last long. Grab him. Smash his head against the bars. Vial shatters. Pick a piece, slash throat. Keys drop. 

Grab keys before they hit the ground - 

It  _ is _ Dimitri. Golden hair falling down past his ears, wide eyes more white than blue, soft cheeks and his bottom lip jutting out in a pout that rarely graced his features. And then he is gone. 

Felix scrambles to chase after him, cursing when the door jams up against the guard still bleeding out on the floor. He darts through the gap he manages to make, grabs the mounted torch, and nearly trips over his own shackled feet in his haste. Dimitri is nothing but flashes of gold, the movement of his hair hypnotizing as he races into the darkness. 

“Dimitri - Dimitri!” Felix is calling out to the boy before he knows it, reaches for the boy - centimeters away from that soft blue tunic that Felix clung to for so many years, that he is  _ still _ reaching for after all this time - and then smashes his hand into solid stone. 

“Fuck! Where - where, what the fuck?” 

Dimitri has vanished. 

Felix spins on his heel, casting light about the empty cells, but Dimitri clearly did not manage to sneak through the bars of any of them - and this last cell, this last cell -  _ has a hole, _ a gaping wound, punched through the wall. It would have been unnoticeable in the darkness, and he never would have bothered to travel down this way. 

There was no reason for him to have ever stumbled upon it if it were not for what must have been some sort of… apparition. A figment of his imagination, a hallucination brought on by stress? 

A sick sense of unease washes over Felix, but he does not want to look this gift horse in the mouth any more than he wants to analyze being led around by ghosts of people not yet dead. A new way out, good,  _ this is good _ , Felix reassures himself. 

Introducing light from his torch further in the cell reveals that there is open space beyond the end of the cell block - likely a room or hallway of sorts, built out of the same stone. There appears to be no light on the other side, and all is quiet except for the crackle of his torch and the measured pace of his breathing. It is a way somewhere, if not necessarily a way forward. 

What does Felix have to lose? His life?

As he clears away some of the rubble blocking his path, Felix finds himself once again wondering just what purpose this dungeon served. It clearly was not in use outside of containing him, and was in an incredible level of disrepair. He shuffles through the passage on his hands and knees, still bound together, hand cramping stiff around the torch and smoke making his eyes water. 

Felix emerges into what is in fact a hallway with little fanfare — a dead end on his left, and darkness extending to his right. The torch provides only a few meters of illumination, so he has no idea what awaits him down this path. Felix makes his way down the hall carefully, minding the drag of metal across his skin and the resounding clank of the chains. He should have ditched these before fucking off to parts unknown. He will not get far bound and unarmed like this. 

At the end of unexpectedly brief the corridor, two paths lay before him: a turn round the corner into further darkness on his left and a rotting wood door to his right. It takes a moment for Felix to realize he can hear the low murmur of voices through the door. He quickly runs the map of the dungeon over in his head: from his cell he has traveled straight, then left to reach the guards room, and now he has done the same but reversed. So this must be the far end of the guards room.

Approaching from this side should put him at the sleeping quarters end of the room - a couple columns of bunks he had spotted beyond their card table. With no reason to idle further, Felix enters the room once more. It seems fortune has favored him - there is a lance propped up against one of the bunks. 

The fight, unsurprisingly, goes quicker this time. There is no need for Felix to use his fists, though the weight of the lance in his grip, and the thought of others hands wrapped around it, almost has him wishing he had never picked it up. 

Guards taken care of, all that was left was to remove the shackles and settle the belts and scabbard on his waist. The weight of his equipment is a comforting one, even if he only has one blade. Felix takes another quick glance around the room, and regrets it. Before this, before all of this, it was rare for him to have to make so many kills in close quarters. 

Felix leaves quickly after that, with not a look behind him. He will see what the earlier passage has in store for him. Back through the old wood door, one fist clenched around the torch, the other the hilt of his sword that has now grown familiar. The hall leading away from the guards’ room and cell block is a short one, turning left abruptly and making Felix fear for a brief moment he would walk in a circle. 

But no, it was in fact a new area, and one Felix would soon regret discovering. This new hallway leads to a series of chambers, each with their own black gate, swung open to beckon him in. 

Felix does not resist temptation, and enters the first one - on guard for whatever it is he may encounter. It is a torture room. Felix need not have seen one before to make the determination. 

Rusted metal shackles hang from the ceiling, a wooden chair is nailed to the floor with a drain beneath it. An iron table with rusting instruments that have not lost their sharp edges. Glenn told him about a couple of those when they were kids. Knives to carve you open, saws to split you in two, devices to keep you alive long enough to see yourself turned inside out. Felix had run to their father in hysterics after, tears and snot everywhere, convinced he would be tortured for his secrets. Glenn had to clean the stables, alone, for a week, but Felix’s nightmares lasted far longer. 

Felix should not linger here. Already he feels the chill clawing at his skin, seeping into his bones. The flames of his torch seem terribly small and weak compared to the darkness of this place, of what must have happened here. He wastes no more time in that first room, and performs only a cursory check in the remaining rooms to confirm his suspicions. 

His suspicions were correct. Each room holds the same purpose, if with different arrangements. A rack in one, a long operating table and cabinet packed with different colored vials in the next. What is this, Hubert’s secret playground? Experiments on prisoners?

Claude will want to sort through all of this once the palace is secured, but Felix will not let Dimitri come within thirty meters of this place. These rooms, their stone walls and the coldness they hold, as if down here one would forget what warmth ever felt like - there is far too much of Fhirdiad in this place. Fhirdiad’s dungeons may not have held torture chambers when Felix last visited, but he knows for a fact that they do now. No, no, Dimitri will never know of this place. Felix will see to it. 

He wrenches himself away from the last room, and into the darkness beyond - meeting nothingness at first, and then a wooden ladder at his feet. Down and onwards, his only options. Deeper into this hell. 

The ladder leads to a tunnel - far different from the short halls of the dungeon above. This is more akin to a sewer than anything else, for Felix is no longer alone, but in the company of far too many rats. The stone is damp with the smell of rot and molding earth, a thick layer of grime laying across the stonework of the tunnel, with no end in sight. Torture chambers behind him, the unknown before him. 

Felix is oddly grateful in this moment that he was the one who ended up here. No one else would have survived down here for long. Except perhaps Claude, who seems to be able to survive anything. Sylvain would be driven mad by the filth, Annette and Ashe by the certainty of ghosts in their midst… Mercedes might be fine. 

Eventually, Felix comes to a crossroads. His options are to continue what he thinks is north towards the canal and the battle, or head west. It is hard to tell how far he has come already, if he is out of the limits of the palace itself or still underneath it. But Felix’s instincts tell him it is the latter, in which heading west would only lead him deeper into the palace. 

Better to head north where at least he knows there is the possibility of getting access to the grounds outside the palace, and perhaps even further. Felix takes note of the alternate route regardless, it is not like he can be choosy. 

After continuing his course, it takes him not much longer to reach the end of his journey through the depths. All that awaits Felix is a dead end and an iron ladder leading upwards. The ladder ends up being around five meters in height, and finishes at an oak hatch door, rotting at the hinges. Everything seems to be rotting in this place. 

Felix can hear nothing through the wood, no sound of footsteps or voices - only the chatter of the rats. There is no reason to hesitate. 

It is not an easy task opening the door. He hooks one arm around the ladder, dangling the torch to illuminate his companions below, and pushes at the stubborn hatch with the other. With a great groan and the sound of wood sliding across stone, Felix greets a whole new world to explore. As he clambers out of the hatch, he realizes there was a wooden crate that had covered almost the entirety of the wood door, hiding it from view. More crates piled upon along with it, and beyond that - 

“Goddess!”

Felix recoils sharply, back crashing hard against the unforgiving stone wall behind him, dropping his torch in his shock and nearly falling back down the hatch. Sparks from his torch skid across the stone and lick at the tender curve of his hand as he scrambles to grab it.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” 

The flames reflect molten on the metal apparatus on the ceiling — hooks, dozens of them, and dangling from them - meat. The initial horror at the stench, the sweet musky smell of flesh, does not leave him even as it dawns upon him that this is nothing more than a cellar. Aged and salted haunches of pork, beef — all recognizable, all familiar. Fuck, he has become Annette. But for a moment he could’ve sworn —  _ no _ , no it was nothing. 

Felix gathers himself, shoves down any sense of unease about this place,  _ about the way he got here _ \- and gives himself a few minutes to take stock. He weaves his way through the dried meats to find the room extending only by a few more meters, almost all of which is packed with crates, barrels, skeins, jars - all matter of containers for foodstuffs. At the far end, opposite from where he entered the room, is a ladder leading up to another hatch. 

Felix climbs the ladder with no intention of pushing open the door above him, merely keeping quiet and listening. It is muffled, but it sounds like the movement of several people overhead. 

He is not exactly sure where he is, but it must be beyond the palace building itself, if still on the grounds. Given the direction he was headed in, the time it took… he must be just north of the palace, but before the canal. He did not travel down deep enough to go beneath it. In all likelihood he is in the cellar of one of the outer buildings around the palace - guardhouse, barracks, storehouses... But Felix would place his bets on the guard house or barracks, perhaps even the one attached to the East Watchtower. There is enough food stored down here for a couple battalions, or one guard house and a very long watch. It is preparation for waiting out a siege, enough food to keep their archers and mages alert and alive for the days to come.

Loathe as Felix is to eat provisions in enemy territory, this is his best bet for a quick safe meal. They will not dip into these provisions just yet, and as long as he is quiet, there is no reason for anyone to get curious about the goings ons of a storeroom. 

Felix has been fortunate that his hunger has not intensified over his many lives, each bout seemingly refreshing him physically, even as he continues to emotionally deteriorate. But he is hungry each time - he did not eat the meal in his cell, which he is still certain is poisoned to get the task done quicker, and consequently has not eaten since lunch the day before (whatever  _ the day before _ is at this point). 

Hunger is a present ache in his gut, not debilitating, but enough that it could hinder his attempts to escape. Food is energy, food is a comfort - one he admits he sorely needs right now. 

It takes a few minutes of rummaging through boxes and parcels to scrounge up some strips of jerky, a hunk of rye bread, and an apple. He goes for the apple first, knowing he will need the moisture to get through the tough bite of the jerky, the bread. The first bite is a gift, fresh and alluring, a little bit of relief after everything he has endured. It feels like too much luck, this fresh food, but he will not waste time cursing good fortune after so much shit. 

On his tongue, it is Fhirdiad in fall, roast game pies with fruit and spices - but down his throat, as that ripened flesh slides downwards, it is thick and viscous. Felix freezes. 

_ That is wrong, why does it _ \- Felix looks down at that gift of a red apple, looks at the worms writhing through its brown flesh, feels the rotting juice pour through the cracks of his fingers. He gives a horrified cry and jolts backwards into the crates behind him, frantically dropping the rotting fruit and clutching at his throat. He gags, clawing at his mouth and tongue, trying to scrape away the sensation of slime across his tongue, the wriggling in his guts -- his treasure trove, his moment of respite lays before him - the meat rancid, fruit full of maggots, the bread covered in thick black mold. 

The world is rotting away around him, or is he the one rotting?

Felix leans over and vomits - that pathetic bit of apple and stomach acid after that. Again and again  _ and again _ till it is nothing but blood, splattering onto the stone ground, running in rivets over the grouting. Scarlet webbing spreading across the ground, with him at the epicenter. 

He had asked Mercedes once about the plague. 

The pain is blinding, every muscle on fire. Felix cannot stop how his body shakes as he heaves, spine and arms screaming for relief with the tension that rolls through him. Sweat drips down the bridge of his nose and soaks through his furs even as the temperature of the world plummets around him. 

She had kept any signs of pity or sympathy from her face, even though his reasons for asking had been as clear as day. She had learned how to handle him - handle his feelings - long ago. She had been so clinical as she explained it to him, a lecture to a class rather than to an orphan. 

Tears pour hot down his cheeks, snot from his nose. It is disgusting, it is relentless. Hubert’s poison was nothing compared to this, the weakness of his physical strength crippled so easily, his bodily functions failing one after one.

Mercedes had laid out the necessity of isolation from others, how those with weakened immune systems were more vulnerable, how quickly one would succumb to the illness, how painful it was to do so. How your body purged itself endlessly, made recovery impossible because it made sustenance impossible, made the ingestion of medicine impossible. How survival until a treatment was found was nearly unthinkable. How many died, how common it became despite how uncommon the symptoms. How utterly unremarkable, yet unforgivably painful, his mother’s death was. 

Felix is crying for her before he realizes it, crying out between gasps for air and retches, “Mama, mama,  _ mama _ ,” his voice sounds foreign to his own ears, the way pain has become so familiar. 

He did not ask Mercedes the question that has carved its way underneath his breastbone, holding his heart in a vice for twenty-three years. The question that he knows Dimitri harbors too. Would their mothers have survived if they never brought their sons into this world? 

He is on his side now, laying in his own mess, eyes unseeing through the blur of his tears and pain.  _ Mama, mama, _ he mumbles, reaching for someone who’s not there, who has never been there - 

Felix misses his mom. Strange, to miss someone you never met. Did Glenn blame Felix for her death? Did his father? Sometimes Felix blames himself. At least in this, Dimitri had no part. 

His breath is coming in wheezes now, blood bubbling up past his lips. His chest hurts, everything hurts. He cannot speak any longer, can only close his eyes and breath what little air he has left. Felix is so alone now. Was his mother this alone when she died too? 

Dimitri must miss his mother too. He must blame himself too. Felix wonders if he still misses Lady Patricia, if he has mourned her for so long he doesn’t know how to not anymore.

_ I should know these things,  _ he thinks, even as he ceases to know anything of the world around him, as his organs shut down and his lungs give up and his heart slows - is Dimitri’s grief only a grand thing for the world’s stage, enough to wage war over, or does it also exist in the little things? Does he also miss the way Glenn would ruffle his hair? Does he miss his smile?  _ Do you…? _

“Not just specters, then,” Felix informs the world at large. No, not just specters, he thinks to himself this time, but also an eradicated plague from a bygone era. Not just defying the permanence of death or time’s flow. No, there is so much more to this curse. The taste of bile and iron is gone from his tongue, his throat no longer scraped raw, but he is anything hale and whole. 

“The food could’ve been poisoned,” Felix rationalizes. “It could’ve been,” he argues to no one. 

Naturally, because not a minute cannot pass with Felix being spared from such thoughts - he is reminded of how Dimitri refuses to take on a taster, how he courts death three times a day. How easily the fate Felix just endured could befall him. 

_ An argument for another day _ , he thinks,  _ if I ever make it to another day. _

The rations Felix has been given sit in the corner of his cell as they always do. Those are poisoned, of that much he is sure. He can be sure of this as well - the food he consumed was poisoned, some plot by the imperials to leave a trap for the palace’s new occupants. And that child, that apparition of Dimitri who guided him onwards, was nothing but a figment of shadow and light and his own clumsy fingers. (Never mind that Felix has never been clumsy a day past thirteen.) 

Conclusion reached, alternatives refused to be considered, Felix waits.  _ Whether there will be a repeat performance will be answered soon enough, _ he thinks, and he is right. But he does not like the answer. 

The shade with Dimitri’s face, his laugh, all his sweetness exchanged for cruelty, kicks the keys once again beyond his reach. Felix was too mired in his doubt, too fixated on watching for the face that haunts his memories that he gave no thought of what to do if he were to actually see it. 

Felix’s decision is made as he is carried off once more to his death: he has to go back. Through the secret chambers and the tunnels to the storage room. It’s the farthest he’s gotten, the strangest experience yet - it is what he has to do. 

What Felix refuses to consider - along with everything else he has buried deep dark and cold in his gut, is that the farther he goes, the stranger things will become. The harder it will be to escape, to be free of this hell. That with each step he takes, Felix invites a greater darkness upon him than he can ever imagine. But that has been the past nine years, anyway. Each day a greater darkness. So next time, this time - he is ready. He kills the guard. Grabs the keys. Chases a ghost into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: allusions to past torture (nothing explicit), graphic depictions of physical illness, emetophobia  
> The content of this chapter portrays a character becoming physically ill with plague symptoms, so watch out for yourself if you are sensitive to discussions of illness and loss of loved ones to illness. 
> 
> The end of this chapter is called Projection because I lost my grandma to COVID this year. Honestly, this whole fic should be renamed Projection. Anyway, please wear a mask, wash your hands, get tested, and look out for each other guys. Also give your loved ones a call. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading the first three chapters of Reprise! It will be updated this Sunday, November 8th at 8PM EST. The next chapter will feature a full color comic by V (@bumblevetr) that is absolutely out of this world. Huge thank you to her and to Rin (@wintersrose616) for being the my spine and limbs and brain for the past few months. Couldn't have done it without them. 
> 
> Once again, comments are deeply appreciated. Come chat with me @cntrlvaneau on twitter. Love you all!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See ending for content warnings.

Dimitri’s mocking laughter is bright and sharp in Felix’s ears as it has not been for a decade, even in the apparition’s absence. It is not even the dissonance that makes it linger, but rather because it was a laugh that Felix rarely heard even in its proper setting. 

It was a laugh that only Glenn could evoke, and was usually roused up in response to a joke at Felix’s expense. For many years, Dimitri never partook in Glenn and Sylvain’s gentle ribbing of Felix - dote on him though they did, they still could not resist the opportunity to make fun. No sense of bitterness remains, at least regarding Glenn. Felix would gladly let his brother tease him for his misadventures in hair styling or tripping over his own feet if it meant such a thing were possible again, if hearing such words did not make him as mad as Dimitri. 

At some point, Dimitri had begun to laugh at Glenn’s jokes. Not Sylvain’s, only Glenn’s, but he still laughed. A sharp uneasy thing at first, but it became more natural over time, even as Felix became more upset with each joke. Dimitri craved Glenn’s approval, almost as much as Felix. Maybe more so. Felix hates to even think about it. Glenn was never cruel, not in the way Felix has learned to be, and so his teasing would soon be forgotten. But Dimitri’s laughter never was. Eventually, as all things do with Felix, it came to be too much and he had burst into tears one afternoon at the sound of that laugh. Felix cannot even remember what the joke had been, but he still remembers the laugh. 

Dimitri had been shocked at his tears, but not more so than when Felix rejected any form of comfort Dimitri tried to offer. Felix had always wanted Dimitri’s affection, the relief that his touch and words brought him. But Felix had cried and swung his fists and yelled and no one could do anything until his father was summoned. Rodrigue heard the whole story through Felix’s tears and snot. 

Rodrigue had words with Glenn, and then with Dimitri. Felix does not know what was said, but he remembers the shame on Dimitri’s face, the way his whole body was bent with guilt. The way as soon as Felix began crying again, asking why Dimitri would laugh at him when they were supposed to be friends, supposed to be  _ best friends _ \- Dimitri had begun crying as well. Big blubbering tears like he never did, so damn miserable as Felix had rarely even seen him be. They cried so much that day that they both came down with head pains and had to be put to bed. Felix refused to be separated from Dimitri. He had already forgiven him. That shame stayed with Dimitri though, and he never laughed at Felix again. Not like that. 

Felix wonders, as he travels through dark tunnels and silence, if Felix’s cruelty began to grate on Dimitri too. If given the opportunity to cry, to throw it all back in Felix’s face, Dimitri would. 

But then Felix realizes, standing at the ladder to the trap door, rats swarm his feet and the warmth of the torch on his face, that perhaps that is precisely why Felix is here in the first place. 

The trap door feels like an unbearable weight when Felix pushes it up and open, the grind of the moving crates deafening in this empty room. The haunches of meat no longer look like corpses, if just because Felix knows them not to be. But weaving through them, crossing the room to where a true corpse once lay - his corpse - remains unsettling. The sight that greets him is even more unsettling, and the natural conclusion even worse. 

No crates of apples or bread. Potatoes and carrots abound, but not a single bright red apple in sight. Nothing fresh and easy to spoil in these provisions of a force awaiting a siege, nothing worth a maggot’s interest. So then how - how had he…? Where did…? Is the curse not only keeping him from death as well, but insistent on putting him through the worst of them? There is no sense to it. Felix is no mage and no scholar, but he has never even heard a bard’s tale of a curse this intricate. 

He can only think of how Hubert so deftly selected Felix’s fate for him. Chose to slaughter him in front of the Lions rather than torture him for information or hold him ransom as security in a suit for peace. But what would Hubert gain from such a curse? Why waste the time? It is not of any benefit to Edelgard, as far as Felix can tell. Unless this is some sort of interrogation? But no offer of release has been made in exchange for information and designing such an elaborate trap… It would be insanity - and there is that word again. That is always an option, always lurking just in the back of his mind as a possibility, waiting for anything to be evidence to prove its viability.  _ Well... _

“Fuck you,” Felix mutters viciously, kicking a crate of potatoes, “and fuck this.” 

He is not getting anywhere standing here. There should be soldiers above him, unless Hubert or the curse or his brain or  _ his madness _ \- conjured that up to. Taking his frustration, his anger,  _ his -  _ whatever _ ,  _ out on them is far more productive than taking it out on the potatoes. Felix gives himself another moment to seethe, gives the potatoes another taste of his fury, and then heads onwards. 

Felix makes it as far as the steel ladder leading up to the next floor, one hand resting on a rung that is cool and ground beneath his palm, before something gives him pause. His cloak is shifting around him, stirring slightly in the breeze. The breeze? 

He takes a step back. Felix is at least somewhere around 10 meters below ground. Why is there a breeze? There should not be anything but stagnant air and rats. And yet it is unmistakable. The slight rush of air about his feet Felix had not noticed earlier, likely because he was too busy  _ dying _ . 

“Where…?” The question slips out softly, more puzzled than frustrated. The air had been stagnant so far, almost stifling and oppressive, buried beneath the earth he was. To feel a breeze was a curious thing, taking him out and away from the rage that had been bubbling up within him. 

Eager for the distraction, and potential lead, Felix lowers himself into a crouch to better identify where exactly the air flow is coming from. He made a soft noise of satisfaction when it figures out it is coming from his left where several massive wooden crates are piled up in the corner, hastily stacked with some gaps between them. 

The crates take several minutes to move, Felix straining with effort to keep his presence concealed and not drop fucking _ root vegetables  _ everywhere. If he brought down a battalion of soldiers on his head because of some fucking carrots, he would kill himself before they could. He  _ hates _ carrots. 

After his successful, and quiet, rearrangement of the room, the now cleared space reveals a grille, about half a meter in height and two-thirds of one in width. For drainage? Who cares. As long as he can fit, and it leads out of here, it could be a waste chute and he would enter with a smile. 

Felix squats in front of his new path forward and squints at it. There appears to be light at the end of it, at least not pitch black darkness, but far more muted than he hoped. As for the crawl space itself, it is certainly a tight fit, but it will do. If he tried to get through with all his swords he would be fucked. As it is, he cannot even bring the one he currently has. 

He eyes the grate with a mix of hope and apprehension. Felix is no Dimitri, but the Fraldarius crest should be enough to get rid of it, especially with the glint of rust at its edges. He settles himself onto the ground, palms pressed behind him, legs extended forward to push up against the thick bars. 

While the Crest of Blaiddyd is the possession of overwhelming strength in all things, the crest of Fraldarius is all about channelling might, threading the eye of a needle. Its most effective use is through a single action, the stroke of a sword or drawing of a bow. Paired with a weapon or tool, including magic, it intensifies force and heightens accuracy. It is not so much about having a strong foundation as is necessary for a Blaiddyd, but a decisive follow through. 

How many times had his father repeated that lesson to him? Felix was so envious as a child that Glenn never had to endure the humiliation of crest training, the endless repetition to just perfect the application of his crest to a single movement. The envy became anger after The Tragedy. If Glenn was the one born with the crest, he could have lived. The Goddess truly is a bitch. 

The first kick to the grate  _ hurts _ , sending sparking pain up his leg, all anger and no control. His rage settles with each blow the grate takes, even as the sound of each one threatens to expose his presence. The exhaustion and lack of food has clearly drained him, but soon enough he feels the rush of adrenaline and the telltale heat under his skin. His crest finally decides to participate, the bars of the grate giving way with a groan, the frame crumpling and bending outwards. 

Felix pushes up onto his haunches, growling to himself, “Follow through, follow through,” and grabs the wrecked metal and  _ pulls _ . The force of his crest kicking in and the metal dislodging from the stone is enough to send him falling on his ass, embarrassment and strain flushing his cheeks.  _ That’s some shit crest control, Fraldarius _ , a voice says that sounds far too much like the Professor. At least it is not his father. Small mercies. 

“Fuck,” Felix snarls, heaving the grille up, ”off,” and throwing it to the floor. He is not quite sure if he was talking to his imaginary Professor or the grate. Probably both. The insanity theory grows stronger. 

And now it is time to crawl through a tunnel fit for a child. 

Felix discards his sword with a sigh, gaze lingering far too long upon it for something he stole off an imperial guard’s corpse. Any sword was always better than no sword. 

Felix was briefly worried the span of his shoulders would pose an obstacle, but as per usual, his slight figure works to his advantage. He whispers quiet thanks to his mother for that, before remembering the last time he invoked her in this room. Felix hurries then, squeezing into the tunnel with arms outstretched in front of him, inching along on his stomach. It is exhausting and suffocating - but at least it slopes downward, further supporting the drainage theory. 

As with all of his crossing of distances through this purgatory, time drags on and passes all at once. The light that he had seen is not the warm glow of flames or clear sunlight, but a mute blue-green, almost gray. 

It is the canal. This is definitely some sort of drainage tunnel and it has led him straight to the massive canal that separates the palace from the Central Square. Felix manages to get his head extended past the exit of the chute and gratefully swallows down a mouthful of muggy air. After a moment’s respite, he cranes his neck to get a better grasp of exactly  _ where _ on the canal he has ended up. He appears to be in the shadow of one of the bridges of all places - the east one by the looks of it, as the other is off to his left. It is not entirely unexpected, considering the location of the dungeons and the trajectory he had followed, but surprisingly nonetheless. 

This canal doubles as a moat and has been the absolute bane of their planning - there are only the two bridges that act as access points from the Palace to the rest of the city, which will inevitably throttle their forces and set them up to be sitting ducks for remaining Imperial aerial and ranged forces. The current plan - well, at least as of last night - is to use combined pegasi and wyvern battalions to take down the Imperial archers and mages lining the outer wall, deploy a strike force to gain control of the battlements, open the gates, and  _ then _ , bring in the vanguard.

After that, well, the interior of the palace is a whole other beast in and of itself. But Felix cannot worry about that now - later,  _ later _ when there is actually someone he can help by worrying about it. 

“Shit.” There is no way he’s crossing it at this point. Felix scoots back into the tunnel and rubs a shaking hand over his face, trying to push sweat damp bangs out of his eyes and only succeeding at getting grime in them. Fuck he hates this place. 

The march of battalions across the bridge is deafening. Retreating or deploying reinforcements? Likely a combination of both. Pulling back ranged fighters to man the battlements, sending out the regular patrol guards to just have more warm bodies between the invasion and the Palace. Now he knows why no one in the tower heard his clanging below. There is no way he can cross from here via the bridge, and it is impossible to swim across either. 

He would survive the drop to the water below, but it is an insurmountable climb on the far side. There is also no swimming east into the canals that weave through the city center. The canal in front of the palace is the confluence of the canals that flow south to the sea - deliberately dug deeper, so that the water flows swifter and there is no simple transit through. He is  _ fucked _ . 

Cannot go down into the canal, cannot go up onto the bridge, cannot get out of the palace limits. Only way he has not tried yet is navigating his way through the palace to the southern gardens, but the deeper he goes into the palace, the thicker security becomes. 

“Shit, shit,  _ shit, _ ” Felix knocks his head against the cool stone of the tunnel as if to knock a better plan loose in his brain, but just succeeds in giving himself a headache. Still hurts less than getting his head bashed in that time he fucked up his guard disguise. 

At this rate it seems like the only way to leave this place is to fly - but he would sooner drown himself in the river a dozen times trying to swim north than fly into the aerial battle of the century. He likely would not even get off the ground. 

In this tiny cramped space under the bridge. with the sound of imperial troops beating down upon him, Felix weighs each terrible option. He is straining his neck looking west to see if the current is any better (it is not, of course it is not), when he spots it. Another drainage port under the western bridge. And hanging from the bridge - well.  _ Fuck _ . That could work. Damn him to hell below, but it could work. At least he will be with Sylvain. 

The bridge should be less overrun with soldiers considering the dearth on them on the western flank, unless to avoid a bottleneck they are spread across both. But that is assuming there are enough soldiers left to pull back for that to even be a concern - and it seemed the palace was fully outfitted from the beginning, knowing that the Lions would make it this far. Dimitri certainly will. Even if he is the only one standing, he will at least make it to the Palace - maybe even to the throne room. Bastard. 

Felix thinks about the tunnel he passed on his way here - the ones he dismissed because they headed west, rather than north. But instead of going further into the palace, perhaps…

Plan decided, Felix awkwardly pushes himself out of the tunnel and drops into the water below and for a moment he is back making the great fall from the tower, waiting to see  _ him _ \- and then it is nothing but bubbles and his furs dragging him down, shouts from above as he is spotted swimming his way into view of the bridge - and then an arrow embedding itself in his skull. 

It is not long before he is once again at those dark crossroads beneath the palace, the accursed canal ahead, unknown to the west. Unknown it is. About a quarter hour passes before he reaches the next juncture, with no company but his vermin scuttling about his feet and fleeing the flames of his torch. He pays them no mind. Five years of war dulls you to the presence of the creatures. At least there are no fresh corpses upon which they could feed. Felix wonders if they have fed upon his. 

The passage splits south and north as it did before in the east. Felix has likely walked the length of the palace - with no walls or doors to impede him, it makes for a quick trip. A map of the tunnel system begins unfolding in Felix’s head. Two parallel paths from the east and west exterior walls of the palace connected to their respective towers and gates, with a passageway crossing beneath the palace to connect the two together. But this would mean… 

There is a distinct possibility of Edelgard having changed the layout during her reign, but also none of the Lions - or Claude - gave much credence to the thought she spent her free time on interior decorating. So if the layout remains the same - or even if it does not - there is a distinct possibility this tunnel heading south leads to the wing for housing the Imperial Family. It is completely bizarre. Felix cannot determine the reason for it. It must have been some sort of escape route for the Imperial Family? Access to the exterior wall and fortifications - but why be connected with the prisoner block and torture chamber of all things? Maybe some sick fuck of an Emperor had it built for their own twisted pleasure? Either way, it is no concern of his. Edelgard is not in her chambers, he would gain no benefit from heading south. North to the canal, and to the battlefield beyond that. This would be it - he would finally make it to the fight. 

The tunnel, storage room, and grate are an exact mirror of those connecting to the East Bridge. However, instead of food, the storage room is packed with all of the other needs for withstanding a siege. Vats of oil, chests of arrows, racks of bows, vials upon vials of antitoxin and vulenaries. Felix would help himself to the latter, but they would undoubtedly get crushed in the tunnel. 

Felix is prepared this time when he dislodges the grille, pleased despite himself that he does not end up on his ass this time. _ Fuck you, Professor.  _ The crawl to the end of the duct and the world beyond is no easier than it was before, but at least he knows what awaits him. Felix takes a moment to collect himself, breath in the canal air, and question his absolutely shitty plan for the hundredth time.

There are about a dozen of them in total, hanging several feet apart from the left side of this bridge, relatively out of sight from the battlements and the East Bridge. How many times has Felix accused Dimitri of using the dead for his own gains? What a hypocrite he will be after this. Nothing new. 

They are criminals, Felix assumes, dangling by their necks on rope from the ledge of the bridge, put on display as a warning. None of them are in uniform, or in any sort of prison garb. There have never been reports of Edelgard executing prisoners of war, or their spies, regardless of her other long list of flaws. She does love to pick and choose her morals. After noticing that one corpse is missing his genitals, hands, and lips, Felix’s guilt dissipates somewhat. A rapist, no doubt. They will be punished the same under Dimitri’s rule. 

The bodies are in varying states of decay, but thankfully none seem to have spent more than a few days in the sun. They should not fall apart if he uses them as leverage to get access to the rope itself. The one closest to him is relatively fresh, only a handful of maggots making a home out of the rot around her neck. She’s dressed in the guard’s uniform and about two meters away from him, approximately at his height. He will have to get a good push off from where he is hanging out of the tunnel, maybe channel his crest to make it work. Which means multiple tries, which means dying again. And again, and  _ again _ . 

He has no choice. If he does not do this, it is back to square one - fuck. Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck _ . Felix shimmies forward on his stomach, clutching at the sides of the exit as he pushes more of his body outside of the safety of the tunnel. He takes a deep breath and then curses a few more times for good measure.

Felix launches himself from the wall, and for one terrible moment he is convinced he did not put enough force into it - but he manages it with a jolt and gasp, hand wrapped tightly around the corpse’s shoulder, fingers sinking into the parted flesh of her collar. 

Felix has one second to revel in his success before there is a sickening crack, the slide of flesh over bone underneath his grip and the corpse is  _ falling _ . Felix along with it. 

Like a fool, he lets out a shocked yelp as he falls, letting water rush into his mouth and down his throat when he hits the canal. Felix thrashes his way to the surface, choking on the water in his lungs and gasping for air to fill them all at once. In his flailing, Felix hits his swimming companion - the corpse, which is bobbing up and down in the water next to him, like some sort of fucked up buoy. At least all the maggots will drown, Felix thinks, even if he will along with them. He  _ really _ fucking hates this canal.

He settles after a moment, putting a couple meters between him and the corpse. Undoubtedly, he has attracted attention from both bridges and there will be another corpse in the canal today. 

Felix sighs loudly as he floats, coughs up a bit more canal water, and raises his eyes towards the sky in an unspoken plea that will never be answered, and is suitably met only with the underside of the bridge. And the massive red diagram painted on it, littered with metal contraptions, glowing faintly and pulsating with magic. A metal ladder leads through it and down back towards the drainage chute - about a meter above in fact.  _ Okay _ . That certainly was not a feature the original architects included. 

Felix squints. It is the sigil for Bolganone. He has seen Sylvain cast it enough times up close and personal (to “save his ass” Sylvain keeps claiming, as if Felix has  _ ever _ needed saving) that he can recognize it, but what the fuck is it doing on the bottom a bridge? And modified in such a way? Why would they want to use an explosive spell on a bri-

“Oh, you have  _ got _ to be fucking kidding me.”

Felix does not get to find out if the universe is kidding because he is shot. Once, then twice, then three times and then he is drowning in a combination of his own blood and canal water and then he is back in his cell, glaring at the stone ceiling as if the blame lies with it and not the Empire it upholds. 

Felix lays in his moldy straw, rotting along with it as he has done so many times now, and  _ thinks _ . He has been doing a lot of that lately. Too much time on his hands. 

A combination of spellwork and technology that they are going to blow the bridge with. Great.  _ Just fucking great _ . He smashes his fist against the stone, gritting his teeth at the reverberating blow. The sting of the pain helps him gather his senses. 

The mechanics behind it are beyond his understanding. But what Felix  _ does _ understand is that if these bridges are blown, the Lions are  _ fucked _ . Even Dimitri could get taken down by blowing up the whole fucking bridge beneath him. And Edelgard certainly knows that. 

The plan is undoubtedly to take down a measure of the Lions forces with the bridges and give those in the palace enough time to escape south out of the city. The spell must be able to be activated from some distance, there is no chance they’d be able to send in a mage on a wyvern or pegasus while the Lions are on the bridges. And if they blow them up before the Lions reach them, then they have lost the opportunity to kill some Lions. No, they will wait till the vanguard is crossing the bridges, once the outer battlements had been cleared of the palace’s first layer of defense and then…  _ fuck _ . They need to deal with this - Felix needs to deal with it. There must be charges at the apex of each arch, but Felix cannot see past the abutment blocking his view. 

“Shit.” 

Getting back to the Lions remains the best option - he cannot be clambering all over this bridge fucking around with magical explosives. He could try one hundred times till he gets it right, but then he will not need to theorize about his insanity any longer. 

This just means that rather than reaching the Lions at the South Central Square, meeting up with them in time to handle Hubert, Felix needs to reach them sooner  _ and _ needs to figure out a way to get rid of this damn trap before the invasion literally ends up dead in the water. All he can do now is use it to his advantage - use the metal ladder they installed to climb up to the apex of the bridge and leap from there. That will give him the height advantage he needs to reach one of the corpses when he jumps. 

This time, he goes through the tunnel on his back. That is the only way he will manage to get up there, with the way the ladder is positioned above the exit of the tunnel. It is terrible. Everything about this is absolutely fucking terrible. It takes forever, and he nearly chokes himself on his cape when it gets stuck underneath his own weight, but it works. Then it is just a matter of extending his arm far enough to grab the lowest rung of the ladder and tugging himself out of the tunnel and up. 

Countless hours of training with a sword ensure that hanging from metal bars on the underside of a bridge is not beyond his capabilities, but it’s far from fun. It is a fight against gravity, against his own body weight - it is being ten years old and hanging from a limb of an apple tree, Dimitri waiting to catch him with fear in his eyes, sure that he will catch Felix, but afraid of how much force he will use to do so. Oddly comparable to the curse waiting to catch him. 

Arms burning, Felix heaves himself up, feet flat against the underside of the bridge so he is poised upside down like some freakish overgrown spider. Falling from this height would fucking hurt. But he is not going to fall - he is going to make this jump. Felix breaths in, out. He Lets the wind blow through his hair, feels the weight of his cape pulling his shoulders down, the force of gravity on every joint, the clench of his abdominals as he resists against it. Okay.

“One,” 

The underside of the bridge, firm and unyielding under his feet, nothing but the endlessly shifting blue grey beneath him. Sway to the left, build up momentum, back and forth - 

“Two,”

He needs to grab the rope, he can use the corpse for support, but he needs to grab the rope and not break his wrist when he does it -

“Three - “

Pressure from the force of the push off, then free fall, his hands reaching out, needs to grab, he needs to -- ahah! Felix smashes full body into the corpse, swinging violently through the air, the world spinning around him in greys and whites, the disgusting give of the body beneath his own. Felix grits his teeth to hold back against the rising bile and pain - his hands  _ burn, _ the rough slide of worn rope cutting into his palm, he needs to - Felix wraps the rope around his wrist, his forearm, presses his feet into the back of the corpse, putting all of his weight on the rope, only using the corpse as leverage and  _ pulls.  _ Hand over hand, his callouses his only saving grace, muscles clenched in effort as he pulls himself up a quarter meter at a time till merely his feet touch the shoulders of the corpse, and then nothing at all. 

He gives himself a moment to breathe, a moment to listen for any suspicion his acrobatics may have aroused. The bellows of the beasts in the distance for once provide him use, rather than low lying terror. Grip firm on the rope, he continues his climb and prepares himself for whatever may await atop the bridge. The archers and mages manning the gate behind him, the spread of a city under siege before him. He needs to move quickly, be light on his feet, and get the fuck out of here as soon as possible. The sooner he loses himself in the battle, the better. 

Felix pulls himself over the side of the bridge and is promptly greeted by a gobsmacked guard reaching for his sheathed sword. Felix almost feels bad for him.  _ Almost. _

“Who the hell are - “

Goodbye.”

Felix shoves the soldier over the side of the bridge, unsheathing the man’s sword before he tips over. One man down, one sword up. Felix turns on his heel. Who is next? 

A whole battalion of foot soldiers by the looks of it, stationed at the archway into the city and transitioning from shock at his sudden appearance to ready to send him back from whence he came. Better capitalize on that lingering surprise.

“Hello.”

They never stood a chance, not now that he has finally tasted freedom from his hell, bright and true, the sky blue above and the ground steady beneath his feet. Felix leaves the fight with two swords at his hip, one clenched in his fist. Finally, something that feels right. Out of those fucking dungeons, out of the palace. He can’t help the grin that tugs at his lips as he races into the South Central Square paying no heed to the flurry of spells and arrows raining down upon him from the gate. This he can do. 

This western part of the square is crawling with troops scrambling to reinforce their comrades in the north and east and equally littered with the wounded. A field camp i set up in the market square, healers frantically working to get soldiers back into the fight, writing off those out of commission. In his Fearghus blues, Felix sticks out like a sore thumb. So, he runs. And when he cannot run, he fights. Luckily, two of the greatest tools of warfare are on his side: confusion and exhaustion. Almost everyone is too busy asking themselves why and how or begging please just let me rest, to challenge him, everyone else is a deployed reinforcement or walking wounded who sees a chance at redemption. 

Felix does not manage to cross the square unscathed, his nose bloodied by a particularly massive brawler, but all of his limbs are attached, and most of the blood he is covered in is not his own. 

He sharply slashes his blade through the air to clean it somewhat, blood splattering across the cobblestone. Little scarlet rivers course through the grouting of the city, arteries mapping each block seized by the Lions and crossed by Felix. The distance between them is narrowing, being cut away with every swing of his sword. He is close now. 

Felix can either cross the bridge between the South and North, then head east to meet up with Lions to help out with the beasts, or… 

_ Ah _ . His next opponent has arrived, emerging from the smoke left over from a mage’s fire spell. Lithe, wielding a spear, stalking into view with a massive grin on his face.  _ Wait, a smile? _

The denial that slips past Felix’s lips is nothing more than a whisper, a plea heard only by his ears, and the Goddess who has never listened before. 

That is  _ Dimitri’s _ smile. Felix hates, he _ fucking hates _ that smile. White teeth bared bright and bloodied, eager and excited by the thrill of the hunt and the pleasure of the kill, the warm bodies left in his wake - 

“No, no,  _ no _ \- “

Dimitri did smile like that once. Broad and beautiful, cheeks pulled tight from laughter, self-consciousness and stature forgotten but for a moment. It was always a rare and precious thing. It is not as if Dimitri did not have cause to smile in their youth, or that anyone prevented him from expressing his happiness - but such a look conveyed a wildness unbefitting for a future King, and at some point that knowledge had wormed its way into his mind. 

“You can’t be - I got out,  _ I’m out, _ I’m out -  _ you _ can’t be here - “

It was a blessing when it was bestowed on Felix - on anyone. It was a wild fierce grin after a spar with Glenn when Dimitri finally won, uncontainable and giddy when Sylvain did his best impression of Fhirdiad’s aging stablemaster, bright and overjoyed when his father returned from a trip - happy and  _ in love _ , when Felix brushed a kiss to his cheek on his twelfth birthday. 

Felix’s own blade is at his throat, come to take him far away from this, back to the safe dark clutches of the dungeons that felt more like home than the battlefields of this war, than anywhere within Dimitri’s reach. He should stand and fight, put to bed the beast that has haunted him, _hunted him_ for nine years. He cannot decide, he cannot, _will not_ , what does he do, _what should I do, what do I do,_ _I want to —_

The blade kisses his throat. He will die a coward. Yet the blade gets no taste of his blood before the head of Dimitri’s spear nestles itself neatly into the flesh of Felix’s breast, into the embrace of his muscle and ribs and then Felix is being _hoisted_ \- up, up, up and gravity does its work and he is falling, _falling_ from the apex of the world and from the bridge into the canal, down, down, _down_ in the blue watery depths of Dimitri’s eyes and the spearhead sinks home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings:  
> Mental illness - specifically Felix's poor understanding of it  
> Suicide - Felix once refers to the preference for killing himself rather than others doing it, and then acts on that belief later
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! This chapter's absolutely STUNNING comic is drawn by the incredible V (@bumblevetr on twitter). [Please go RT, like, and reply with the praise she deserves!!!](https://twitter.com/Bumblevetr/status/1325645068460580864?s=20) I cannot express how incredible it was seeing her take on this encounter, it was massive inspiration for my writing. I also chose to frame her art rather than describe it, but her art is worth a hundred thousand words I cannot conceive. 
> 
> Also I was really happy to let Felix be a little more snarky in this... but his good humor... uhhhh well. It will come back eventually. 
> 
> If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave me a comment! They are greatly appreciated and I love to hear what you think!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for content warnings.

A body hoisted up to the sky, an offering to the old gods, feet dangling, limbs askew, blood seeping down to return to the world from which it was borne. 

Twice in Felix’s life has he played witness to such a sacrifice (and now, and just once for now, played the main part). A squire, impaled on a boar’s tusk when he was seven years old. The leader of a rebellion, spiked on Dimitri’s lance when they were fifteen. 

The squire had fallen from his horse in the pursuit of the boar, which had killed several farmers at the edge of Fraldarius’ domain. Felix’s father had taken it upon himself to hunt the beast that had terrorized his people, bringing his two sons along as a lesson about fealty, duty, chivalry, and service to others. 

Those same reasons sent Felix to suppress a rebellion lighting the west in flames, to serve his liege, his Crown Prince Dimitri, in his brother’s stead. Their maiden battle shared together, an honor.

Felix remembers how bright the squire’s blood was, the high pitch of his shrieks. How the boar’s eyes rolled over pearl white, squealing as his father’s sword sunk into its skull, slid through the soft give of its brain. Felix had scrambled from his horse and been sick behind a tree as soon as he remembered how to move, that his limbs were there and very much for using. Glenn had sought him out immediately, sweeping his sweat soaked bangs back and wiping vomit from Felix’s mouth with his own sleeve. 

“It’s alright, Felix,” Glenn had murmured, stroking Felix’s hair and rubbing gentle circles into his shaking back, “You’re safe. The boar is dead.” 

It was Glenn that was supposed to protect Dimitri in his maiden battle, to ride at his side, act as his eyes and his shield - it was  _ Glenn _ who was supposed to be there that day. Not Felix. 

It was not the first time Felix had witnessed death, but never like that. The swift slaughter of farm animals for a feast or the clean precise kill of a hunt for sport - nothing like those minutes of chaos, of blood flying through the air and the screams of beast and man alike overwhelming him. The Western Rebellion, that day in the woods - those moments are interchangeable, the horror fresh and always rising in the back of his throat, always threatening to choke him, cut off what little air he had left. 

It did not take long for Glenn to soothe him that day, it never did. Glenn said Felix was safe, and so he was. He would shed a few more tears, choke on his own spit, but otherwise turn his face up to his brother to get cleaned up, sniffle and tug him close for a hug, and then return to the scene from which he fled. 

There had been tales about the boar being not entirely natural, of some curse or demonic energy giving it strength. At the time, Felix had thought that certainly no normal boar would have been able to bear a flight of arrows in his back and still managed to pin a boy to a tree, rendering flesh and bone in a desperate attempt to save itself. But after his father had killed the boar himself, sewed up the squire’s torn flesh with a glimmer and wave of his hands, quieted his cries and praised his bravery -- it was revealed that the boar was a boar, nothing more. 

That it had been driven from its home by bandits, driven by weather and migration to prowl through nearby villages, searching for shelter and food and finding nothing but farmers with pitchforks and hunters looking for good quarry before winter. 

What was Dimitri’s excuse?

Felix wonders if his father ever made the connection. If he would even remember teaching his sons to put down wild beasts that threaten his people. Would Glenn have remembered? Would Glenn have even allowed this to have come so far, or if he had been there that day, seen Dimitri, seen the boar as Felix had, would he have put a stop to it all? 

Felix has not grown stronger at all. Nine years he spent dedicated to the simple goal of becoming stronger than all the rest and in the end, none of it fucking mattered. All that time and he never became strong enough to just stay alive. 

Faced with Dimitri from that day, with  _ the Boar _ himself, untainted by deceit or facade, it was Felix’s instinct to flee. To  _ kill himself  _ rather than face the creature. Death may now be an ephemeral thing, but he could’ve just  _ run _ . But instead he just -

“Fuck,” he curses into his hands, bitter and angry and definitely more of a sob than anything else. 

He is still just that weak  _ stupid fucking kid _ that could not stop Dimitri all those years ago. Felix was not strong enough to stop his madness, much less to save him - no, no that was Dedue, his father, the Professor,  _ never Felix _ \- and now that would be his undoing. How was he to go on, if this was the fate that awaited him? What is the fuck point of all of this, of this hell and his life beyond it? 

The guard is here. Caterino. 

“How many times have I killed you?”

“Do you recall them as I do?” 

“If you did, I doubt you would approach me in such a way.”

“And yet, here am I, approaching life in the same manner as I always have. Suppose I am no smarter.” 

“What do you think, Caterino?” Felix asks the man bleeding out at his feet. Caterino gurgles in response, reaching out one scarlet hand to grab at the boot in front of him. Felix stares blankly at the man as he dies; watches the life fade from pale green eyes. He only turns away when those eyes are dark and dull. That ghost of his best friend has not lingered, did not wait to guide Felix onwards as he has done every time before. Felix hesitates in the gloom, in face of the dark corridors ahead and sunlight beyond. 

He was not one for ordinary fears, neither heights nor tight spaces affect him as they did other men. But now, it seems as if his anything but common experiences have left him with common terror. It is as if this hell has slowly been eating away at him in fits and starts, till it has left his nerves raw and exposed to the weakest of the elements. It is frightful, to feel himself becoming a lesser man than he was when he first started. 

Onwards. Down the hall, through the hole, to the guards room door. 

Flickering light through the cracks in the rotted wood, blood pouring through the crack beneath the door, pooling around his boots. Something -  _ someone _ , has gotten to the guards before he did. Their screams fall on deaf ears when Felix breaks into a sprint, round the corner, past the torture chambers - 

There is a rung missing from the ladder, second from the top, Felix never noticed - his foot descends to find nothing, heart rises in his throat, stomach swooping — and so he is falling, each rung breaking beneath the weight of him. Crack, crack, crack -  _ CRACK _ ! 

The final resounding sound of his skull splitting open on the floor deafens the pain, if just but for a moment. Then everything is warm and  _ wet _ and there is just the sound of footsteps and leather boots in his fading vision and everything is cold and then dark dark  _ dark _ . 

He makes it to the tunnel the next time. 

Then it is the smell of mold, urine, and rat waste rotting away over decades. The ceaseless chattering of the rats, their claws scurrying over stone and bone alike. This time, there is only the sound of his own footsteps echoing and the drip, drip, drip of water -  _ it must be water  _ \- sliding down the carved walls. Constant reminders that he is below, underneath, buried down deep - if he dies down here, if he keeps dying here, really,  _ truly _ \- he will never ever be found. 

No company but the ever present fear his torch will run out, that he will be lost in this darkness with no respite. The walls are closing in, his breathing growing short, heart beginning to race. He will be left to rot, to be fed upon by the rats that already nibble at his heels - they must be so hungry down in these depths with no feast to be had, no matter who emerges victorious this day. That is, unless, he has long provided them with the sustenance of his own flesh. 

Who knows how many hours have passed, years, centuries — perhaps he is a spirit already, haunting these halls out of spite and grief as so many seem to be. How could such a thing not have occurred to him before? It seems to be such an obvious answer for his plight, but perhaps it is true that ghosts are such pitiable things to not even be aware of their own fate. 

Is he alone in his damnation, or only one of many? How does the Emperor sleep with such rot beneath her, eating away at the foundations of her home… 

There it is again. The scrape of metal against stone, nails on a blackboard -  _ pay attention Fraldarius, this part is important -  _

Each breath is ice in his lungs, frost spreading to each organ, freezing him inside out, slowing his heart and numbing his limbs. Through the chute now, ever awaiting the sensation of five fingers wrapping tight around his ankle, the inevitable yank backwards, the slicing out of his spine - but then it is the canal and the wind beneath his feet. The sun no longer brings him anything warmth, his hands as cold as the corpse beneath them.

Then he is on the bridge, air thick with smoke and terror and stone soaked scarlet beneath his feet. The battalion and guards have all been slaughtered. Entrails decorate the bridge, corpses mounted as gargoyles upon the ledge to keep solemn watch, and Felix standing in the midst of it all with the screech of metal over stone in his ears, using his soul for a whetstone. 

Run - he needs to. Needs to  _ RUN _ .

Laughter follows him. Chasing him faster than the rush of footfall behind him, the whistle of the spear tip cutting through the air, teasing his wake. Felix needs to get out of here, needs to make it to — 

Make it where? Where do you want to go,  _ Felix _ ? Through the square past the dead and dying, over bridge to the living, to respite and deliverance — 

Is he running to Dimitri, or from him? Has this not always been so? 

No, no, _it has not,_ there was a time before there _must have been a time before_ , when he was only ever running to Dimitri, running after him — 

Felix cannot breathe, each rush of air drags claws laced with arsenic down into his lungs. 

Would Dimitri of the past leave him upon reunion with the one of the present? 

Or would they just — will he never leave? He is never going to leave, never going to let Felix - 

Eight years and he will not go away,  _ please go away, leave me alone  _ — 

Felix whirls around, heart in his throat,  _ screams _ —

Then there is nothing but the wind on his skin, through his hair, a city under siege spread out beneath his feet, and teeth buried in his torso from shoulder to hip through flesh and muscle and bone and -

_ it fucking hurts so fucking much _ ,  _ mama please, _ Felix is screaming, blood pouring past his lips - 

\- he is now, in two, or maybe three pieces? 

Felix is falling apart in every way, these days. Rib cage wrenched open, flesh ripped apart to create seams where none existed - 

Dimitri is watching, Felix can  _ feel _ him, standing meters below as Felix is torn apart,  _ eaten alive, _ he is doing nothing, nothing but  _ smiling _ — is he not smiling? 

That is Dimitri, is that not  _ his _ Dimitri?  _ Which one is his anyway? _

Once again, his cell. Felix wakes, rises, prepares. He does not clutch at himself in a pathetic shadow of an embrace, does not claw at his own skin to keep his organs within, does not cry or scream or beg for mercy, because what is the point, what is the point to this farce —

Felix will look out for the demonic beasts this time. 

Grab the guard, smash his head, grab smashed vial,  _ smash _ \- no, slash throat. Keys fall - grab them before they hit the floor. Ignore the kick and whined complaint. Open the door. Then, down the hallway. Heed not the pleas and curses shouted at him as he races deeper into the dungeons. Last cell on the left. Open the lock, slam through the door. Hole in the wall on the right, through the hole. Mind the steel jutting out of the exit. Do not lose a finger as he has before. 

Frost underfoot. 

Ignore it.

His breath clouding white, teeth chattering. Ache at the base of his skull, pain at the tips of his ears. 

Do not believe it. Just because you see it, does not mean -

Down the hall. Do not trip on the rat. Open the door, eliminate the guards. Grab the keys, undo the shackles. Put on scabbard and belts. Grab the sword. Get the fuck out of there. Slam the door shut. Do not think about the kid. He is still bleeding out. 

Pivot round the corner. Run down the hall. Do not look in the rooms, not into a single room - 

Breathe through your mouth. Do not pay attention to whatever you stepped in this time, the cold ache of your fingers, the ache in your belly. 

Almost at the end, almost to the ladder, the exit, the way below, must get below - 

The next moment, it is as if knives slide between each of his ribs and  _ twist _ \- a banshee’s wail slices through his very being, a mournful keening begging for his attention, his assistance, his mercy and kindness in a world where no such thing exists. 

It is just a guard, merely a guard. Felix had caused that pain, and that pain would end them. He was not a threat, he was nothing more than a dying man - 

Dimitri’s nightmares had only woken Felix once at the Academy. It was how Felix imagined Glenn sounded, being burned alive. Enduring an unimaginable pain that Felix had done his best to imagine.

That cry again, a life unraveling at the edges. 

It is Dimitri that is screaming. Felix  _ knows _ that is Dimitri’s voice, knows it just as he knows it  _ cannot _ be real, is not possible. Dimitri is  _ not _ here. And when he is — 

Felix cannot do anything to help him here, he needs to escape from Dimitri, escape to help Dimitri - 

Felix turns around. The distance between himself and that first chamber, the thick pine door and pale stone walls - that should not be here,  _ this is not right _ \- is measured only in the increasing volume of the misery echoing through the halls. 

One pace away, the final scream, the splintering of the heavens, the collapse of the world at Felix’s feet. Then all that is left is hysterics, pitiful wet sobs, and that is  _ his  _ Dimitri crying as Felix never heard him cry and then a soft, singular plea - 

“Mother,  _ mother, please _ …” 

Felix stands frozen at the entrance to the room. 

Shackles hang from the ceiling, blood sluggishly sliding down a drain, streaking across the floor where someone had been dragged. Streaks that trail up to his feet, trail past him into the hall, into the white depths of Castle Fhirdiad, where he knows for certain they were not before. Where  _ he _ was not before. 

Offset in the room there is a workbench. Dark wood, top sheathed in ruddy rusted metal. Instruments of all sorts arranged neatly, perfectly measured rows. Polished, clean. Not a trace of blood or rust on them. And then Felix sees the tray. 

A gleaming white pearl on a silver tray, the largest pearl Felix has ever seen, the most perfect pearl glinting wet in the torchlight. It rolls, as pearls are not ought to do, as nothing as ought to do without force behind it. It is then that Felix realizes it is something far more precious than any pearl, no matter its size. But a part of something once living, it still is. 

He needs to leave, he needs to go, but it is  _ looking at him, _ sapphire skies and the ocean under midday sun, the most beautiful blue he has ever seen and all he wants to see again but not like this, never like his,  _ he needs to get the fuck out of here -  _

Supple flesh pressing against his back, the caress of clawed nails at his throat, cloying perfume like the court in spring and the executioner’s block in winter - 

“It truly is a pity I couldn’t get my hands on your father while he was alive. You’ll have to do instead.”

Felix’s wrenches himself out her grip, reaches to sink his fist into that bitch’s face, to rend the flesh from her skull, rip her lips off to never form a smirk again - 

But she is already dead. As is he. Back in his cell, again. Felix’s hand shakes as he brings it up to his right eye, the cut of view already a familiar one for how many times he has done it. How many times he has studied it, memorized one of Dimitri’s potential blind spots as any good Shield should. Any good Shield would have never let it happen in the first place. Any good Shield would not have stayed back in Fraldarius while his father - 

Felix’s hands curl into fists, digging his nails into the flesh of his palm for that sweet spark of pain - and when it is not enough, as it is  _ never _ enough - he pummels the stone beneath him as if it were flesh that would give, and is rewarded with broken knuckles and a pain he can drown in. 

Felix lets the guards take him this time, just to see that blue where it belongs. Fierce and bright, in a body housing a soul to fit. Dimitri is alive, Cornelia is dead. And now, once again, so is Felix. 

Taking the guards down this time is a mess. Felix fumbles his first attack, hesitates on his second, and then leaves himself wide open for a fire spell by the mage. 

It is only dumb luck the kid takes advantage of the opening too - and puts himself right between the flames and Felix. The guard goes down screaming and Felix wastes no time crossing round him to cut off the mage’s next attack. 

The tip of Felix’s spear parts through robe and skin like water, the shocking pain of the broad slash causing the mage to fall to his knees. Felix swiftly sidesteps the man as he falls, adjusts his grip on the shaft, and severs the mage’s head from his shoulders. Felix learned that from Dimitri. 

Now it is just Felix, and the boy on fire. It is instinctual to grab a blanket from one of the bunks and throw it over the kid, patting out the flames and quieting his screams at the same time. Felix does his best to make sure the cloth does not stick to the red blooming across the kid’s skin, but it is almost pointless. 

The mage definitely had time enough to cut off his cast, but apparently could not care less about lighting up one of his own comrades in the crossfire. But who is Felix to judge? He has killed this kid more times than the other man will ever be able to. Madness, Felix thinks for the hundredth, maybe thousandth time. How can this be anything but madness? 

He could continue to blame instinct for what follows, every healer’s book he read between the ages of thirteen and twenty-two about what fire does to the human body - but Felix knows what he is doing. Felix is trying to save a kid's life he has killed dozens of times before. Dimitri would be pleased.

First, Felix needs to irrigate the burns, he needs to cool the kid down, needs to stop him from cooking outside in - he needs water, he needs a lot of fucking water - a water skin pulled off one of the corpses, bucket of water by the fire to put it out, basin in the washroom. Strip the sheets from one of the bunks, rip them into manageable swaths, soak and spread across the burns. Ignore the waxy white tissue, there is no point, means the burns are far too deep, he cannot feel anything anyway - focus on the perimeter of the worst of the burns, on the blisters bubbling up around, on every square centimeter of destroyed flesh causing this kid immeasurable pain. 

Missed most of his face, kid’s lucky. Heat will melt your eyes, burst them out of your sockets - he always wondered if that happened to Glenn, if those blue eyes just like their father’s - 

“How old are you?”

Felix should just end this right now. Give him a quick painless kill. That would be the rational way about it, the merciful one too. The kid will be alive next time around, Felix will kill him next time around, what does it matter, why is he - 

“Kid - answer me, look at me, do not fucking touch - just look - how old are you?”

“F-fifteen,” the kid gasps, saliva foaming at his lips, delirious in pain, “It hurts -  _ hurts _ \- I want, I want - “

“What _the_ _fuck_ is a fifteen year old doing here - “

Sudden lucidity, sudden wrath, defiance on death’s door, even through the shuddering of his teeth and rasp of his breath, “It is an honor to protect the Emperor. And to serve Adrestia.”

The words are rote, tired and bland, but his tone is anything but. Fury bubbles up inside Felix for the first time since he let the fear set in, feels it bolster him and pool warm and sticky in his gut. This kid is so  _ fucking stupid _ , he knows nothing - he is going to die here, die a thousand more times at Felix’s hand for the woman that put him in front of Felix’s blade in the first place. 

“It is pointless. She is going to die tonight. The Empire too,” he needs this boy to understand this,  _ Felix needs him to _ \- “With or without me out there - you know that right? You are going to die for nothing.”

Felix sees some spirit in this boy, raging against his fate, just as it is tightening its noose around his neck. His face stretches grotesquely as he spits at Felix - grey blue eyes melting in his skull, long dark hair threaded through cooked flesh, all defiance and fierce  _ Fraldarius _ pride - 

“What do you know? You’re a deserter. You believe in nothing. _ You abandoned your King _ \- “ 

A snarl cuts the soldier off, dark and full of warning, bloodied teeth bared sharp, “I  _ did not _ abandon Dimitri. I never have and  _ I never will _ .”

The soldier is a boy again, terrified and white as the sheets holding his flesh together. Warm brown eyes fading fast, shorn hair of the same color half burned off - 

Felix slumps down to the floor. He heaves a sigh, buries his face in his hands. He is shaking

The tears are silent when they come, but they burn as they cut their way down his cheeks, sting as they fill his eyes, as his breath gets thick and his lungs ache with effort - 

Felix almost welcomes the feeling of a blade burying itself in his breast, the tip of a familiar spear in familiar hands greeting his body like the old friend it is. But there is no sensation Felix detests more than the slide of blood from his body, hot and sticky and slipping through each and every crack between his fingers as he tries to staunch the flow. Being wounded so grievously as to merit such attention is the ultimate loss of control. 

In this moment, as he bleeds out, Felix admits to missing his father. Just in this moment. He misses the warm glow of his Faith, the steady hand on his shoulder, soft blue eyes gazing upon him. How soft his voice would grow with words of assurance, authority weighing down each word till the listener had no choice but to accept their legitimacy. To believe in what he told them, in the world as he saw it. Felix wants to be told it is going to be okay. He really,  _ really _ wants that. He wants Glenn to brush his hair out of his face, wipe away his tears - wants,  _ Felix wants _ \- 

The kid is still dying next to him, will succumb to his wounds just as Felix will. All he got was someone shouting in his face, telling him his death would be nothing - no one to tell that kid everything would be okay, even if it was not going to be. No one was there to tell Glenn. 

Felix had always spurned Faith - it could not make him stronger, the point was to become so strong that you would never need a healer on a battlefield. Learning faith was a crutch, something that would only encourage you to let your guard down. Faith -  _ faith _ ? Ah yes, yes, faith was such a weakness - believing in something only to have it let you down. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings:  
> Suicide/Suicidal thoughts - Felix reflects on his choice to kill himself in the previous chapter and several times throughout this chapter has thoughts that could be considered suicidal in nature  
> Self harm - Felix repeatedly punches the stone floor to intentionally bring himself pain as a relief/distraction  
> Mental Illness - continued shitty MI opinions brought to you by Felix  
> Torture - allusions to Dimitri being tortured by Cornelia, nothing graphic described  
> Burns - semi-graphic descriptions of burn wounds  
> Panic Attacks - this chapter is basically one long panic attack 
> 
> Again, massive thank you to V (@bumblevetr) and Rin (@wintersrose616) for all their support, edits, and suggestions. We are now about half way through unless I make any structural changes! Thank you very much for reading this far, I truly hope you are enjoying this story. If you are, I would greatly appreciate any feedback or comments you may have <3 They make the four drafts of this chapter worth it!! I'm running out of red pens!!! Thank all <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flagging CWs at the beginning of the chapter this time because the focus of this chapter is almost exclusively on one of them: this chapter includes a semi-graphic depiction of self harm after the fact, suicidal thoughts, and discussion around suicide. Please take care of yourselves. 
> 
> See endnotes for greater detail about the scene and what line to go to in order to skip it. 
> 
> Recommended listening: Promise Reprise from Silent Hill 2

Felix is tired. Perhaps he will let them take him this time. Kill him this time, maybe the next. 

The guard is at the gate. Early this time, Felix thinks. Quicker death this time, a relief? 

“Desert, did you? Finally got sick of playing nursemaid to the Mad King?” 

Felix is on his feet. 

Grab the guard, smash his head into the bars, grab the glass vial, slash his fucking throat so he can never speak a word again. Grab his keys. Open the cell door. Ignore Dimitri. Down the hallway. Last cell on the left. Through the door. Hole in the wall on the right, through the hole. 

Down the hall. Open the guard’s door, one pace in, ignore the startled yells and grab the -  _ the startled yells? _

There is not a sound, and whatsmore, not a soul in the guards’ room. Half a dozen bunks bereft of their charges, table clear of the remnants of their game, of any sign of life. The room was empty, not a soul - wait no, that is not true - when did - he must have always been - 

A boy - a young man, really - sits at the edge of one of the beds. Dagger pressed into his wrist, forearm painted red. He does not look up as Felix enters, no acknowledgement of the new presence in the room. He is bleeding profusely, but does not seem to care. No fascination, no pleasure or even relief. An unseeing gaze, lips parted as if a gasp of pain is not worth the breath. 

“You - “ Felix swallows hard, thinks of his father - “put that down. Stop that.” 

The youth looks up. He is familiar -  _ so familiar _ . Felix cannot place him in his memories, cannot string enough thoughts together - in fact this room itself is familiar, bed against one wall, desk the other, endless books and papers and broken quills in between. Blue rug worn under his feet. 

The boy’s brow furrows and a frown curls across his lips. Not displeased or disappointed or angry, just... puzzled. When he speaks, it is neither a whisper nor a shout, nothing to convey the intensity of this moment between them, of the act he had been caught committing. 

Merely a statement, a clearing of the air as if his words would provide all the illumination necessary for Felix to understand the scene before him. 

“But you are the same as me.”

_ Which would be what,  _ Felix thinks.  _ Dead?  _

All at once, Felix feels as if he is going to vomit - indeed he feels bile rising in his throat, fiery and acidic like he had been gutted. Had he - ? He glances down, moving to grasp, to contain, to hold himself together - but no, no there is nothing. He is fine. He is whole. No spear buried in his belly as he had expected, almost, wanted. A coward he remains. The reply spills past Felix’s lips like bile all the same: “I am not the same as you.” 

A shake of his head, dismissal of Felix’s denial before he finished issuing it.

“You know that it is easier just to run.”

“What are you talking about - “

“Besides,” Dimitri says, moving to bring the blade to his wrist again, “it is what we deserve.”

Felix does not let the two meet. Never will he again. He covers the cut with his own hand, grips it firm to stem the bleeding. The split seam of the wrist beneath his palm is a strangely delicate thing, horizontal, not vertical, which is a small mercy. The sluice that was the thin skin there was drawn open with expertise, allowing for a flow sluggish enough to cease at will, but the cut deep enough to produce the desired pain. Practiced, meticulous. Dimitri was always so careful with fragile things. 

Felix’s vision is darkening as he struggles for breath, but his grip does not falter. Dimitri is unmoved, if inquisitive. Despite the undoubtable pain of his self-inflicted wound, he looks at Felix as if he is the one who is suffering, whose madness is getting the better of him as it always has. The dagger remains poised in the air, hesitant, as if Felix would ever allow it to touch this boy’s skin again. 

“Do you mind?” Dimitri inquires, polite and curious. Felix wants to scream. 

What a strange question. Phrased as if asking permission to take a rest in the middle of a training session or to take a drag from a pipe in someone’s vicinity, to indulge in a vice in front of another - 

“Yes,” Felix whispers, hand covered in blood, his own weight suddenly too heavy to bear, “I mind.”

He sinks down onto the bed to sit beside Dimitri, not easing his hold on the boy’s wrist. They sit like that for a long minute, side by side, centimeters of space between them, blood slowing under the pressure Felix is applying. The boy had been staring at his wrist, but looks up at Felix then, eyes weary. So worn out, fading at the edges into the gloom of the world around him. 

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you care?” 

“I... I...” Felix cannot think, cannot string  _ two fucking words together _ \- why does he care? It hurts  _ so much _ to care, it hurts so fucking much it paralyzes him and twists his tongue and his heart and his mind and makes  _ living though the day _ almost unbearable. 

Felix wishes he did not care, he goes through every. single. day. pretending that he does  _ not _ because he is terrified if he does, if he just  _ acknowledges _ the weight of watching those he loves tear themselves apart for a world that would not do the same - then he will follow suit. He would succumb to madness and vice just the same as they all had, obsession with knighthood and chivalry or drowning in sin as a pleasure, death as justification for living - 

But sitting here, Dimitri asking him  _ why _ Felix cares, as if Felix has not been in love with him since he was six years old, when his whole world was nothing more than blue eyes, blond hair and a smile like the sun - Felix realizes how completely utterly fucking stupid he has been. 

In his great effort to protect himself from the pain of those he loves, all he had done was inflict upon them greater pain and onto himself. A never ending cycle of pain and stupidity and  _ selfishness _ . 

His carefully crafted indifference and spite, every word he spat to build up a barrier between himself and anything that could hurt him - what was the point of it all, if he is still in pain, if he still wants Dimitri to succeed, his friends to live not just survive - but will never truly fight for it? 

Felix is running around in fucking circles. Always has been. No wonder he is so - 

“I am tired, Felix.”

Felix grimaces, but does not look away. His voice holds no pity when he answers. 

“I know, Dimitri. I know.”

They sit there, for how long, Felix does not know. The invasion could have failed by now, the palace could be under siege, the world could come crashing down around them in a rain of hellfire and ice and it would not matter. Not with the steady pulse against his own, the soft breathing in sync with his. His world falling apart and into place all once. 

It is Dimitri that finally breaks the silence. He is quiet, but there is fear there, not just the weariness and detached confusion from earlier. He is scared, of the question, of the answer, or to ask it at all. 

“What is the point?” 

“The point of what?”

“Of this. Of anything, everything.” 

Felix stares, long and hard at the boy in front of him. He is as Felix was never privy to, the perfection and monstrosity juxtaposed in soft light , worn and tired and the boy that he is. Was. 

“To get better.”

“Get better at what?”

At many things, Felix thinks. At the blade, he thinks. “At living,” is what he says.

A twitch of the boy's lips, a soft exhalation. Faint amusement, he acquiesces not in words but in the placing of the knife down on the bed between their thighs. For the first time since Felix awoke in his cell, he feels the rush of victory, of accomplishment, of a struggle well fought. He had almost forgotten what it felt like. He had almost forgotten that something besides battle could feel like this. 

“Did you find the person you are looking for?”

Felix considers the question, but does not hesitate upon the answer when he gives it: “No, not yet.”

A nod in recognition is all he gets in return, no apology or further curiosity. Just acknowledgement of the task still ahead of Felix. 

“What about that?” Felix asks, tone mild. 

The boy looks at the dagger between them. It does not reflect Dimitri’s face as he looks at it. He looks back up at Felix. 

“Can you hold it for me? If I keep it, I am not sure what I might do.”

Felix takes it in his free hand, the handle heavy in his palm, silver blade scarlet. What a burden to carry. 

“Thank you.”

Dimitri looks at him curiously, eyes widening slightly, lips parted. 

“For what?”

“For trusting me.”

Dimitri smiles again, sunlight hair falling into those sky blue eyes, striking as the azure cape slung over his shoulder. He sits taller now, taller than Felix even with all the years between him. Felix has not seen him with his gauntlets off since he first put them on. His hands are pale, gnarled things. Not enough sun, too much fire. Twisted burns crawl down from his fingertips to his wrists like vines, blossoming into pink and scarlet scarring down his forearms. 

What terrible hands, Felix thinks, capable of such terrible things. Yet so vulnerable resting in his own, Dimitri’s blood spilled across both of them, drying under their fingernails, rusting along their knuckles. 

“It feels nice, does it not? To be trusted.”

Felix’s face crumples, as he holds the dagger carefully in his lap with one hand, Dimitri’s life in his other. His voice does not tremble as he replies, but those hands certainly do, “It does.”

The next time Felix sees Dimitri, he is younger. They are not in his room in Garreg Mach, soft rug underfoot, the ease and give of bedding beneath them. It is the battlefield where Felix has died so many times before, where Dimitri has killed so many more. The fields ripe for harvest between Mateus and Gideon, the burning Central Square of Enbarr. The dirt greedily drank the blood spilled nine years ago, but the stone now scorns it. 

Chest heaving, pinkened saliva frothing through his teeth. Two eyes sharp as sapphires, wide and bloodshot, darkness beneath them. That wide smile, sharp perfect teeth. 

He is terribly small. What a strange thought. Dimitri has always been taller than him. 

But here he is, at his most volatile he has ever been and all Felix can think of the boy in the bed. The dagger tucked into his belt at his hip. 

Had Dimitri started hurting himself all these years ago? Two years before the Academy, two years before that sad little room with disinfectant in the drawer and a rag to mop up the blood? Or was this how he inflicted pain upon himself, making himself into the very thing he hated. 

How long, Felix wants to ask, how long have you been doing this to yourself? How long have you felt this way? How long was I unable to help you? Refused to help you? Did I make it worse? I must have made it worse. 

Dimitri is coming for Felix now, stalking through smoke and hellfire, killing anyone that comes between them. With spear and fists and teeth, he is an unstoppable force of nature, as time and memory are. 

He is the most terrifying thing Felix has ever seen, and ever will. And yet, Felix cannot muster the will to be frightened. It was as exhausting to be scared, as it was to be angry once he refused to show fear. Distraught all through both. None of these feelings have brought him any relief, none of them will bring any now. 

Sleep soft, hair in disarray Tear tracks glistening on his cheeks over dark shadows, eyes red, but lips redder from the imprint of Felix’s teeth. Standing in the doorway to his bedroom. That was the last time Felix saw him before the rebellion. The last time he felt the warmth of Dimitri’s skin and heard honesty in his words. They were just fourteen. 

Felix had come to say goodbye after the first anniversary of The Tragedy, at the beginning of the many months they would remain separated. On that visit to Fhirdiad, Felix had only seen Dimitri at meals and the memorial, glimpses of the boy who once filled his vision. He wanted to be by Dimitri’s side more than anything in the world, but it was no longer his place. Felix was not sure when that had come to be.

The initial strike is easy to dodge, easier than it should be for having killed him so many times before. But it is even easier to pull the child before him into his arms, tug him firmly against his chest, rest his chin on blood soaked golden strands just as Glenn used to do to him. The boy does not struggle, Felix never did either. Hugs are a precious thing. 

How long had it been since this boy had received one? Since that night perhaps. Since Felix came to his room, stole an embrace and a kiss and in return gave a confession that remains unanswered. Dimitri had been so frail in Felix’s arms, awoken from a nightmare by Felix’s visit - or rather, perhaps returned to one. Dimitri had curled into Felix’s embrace for just a moment, let his lips go soft and sweet beneath Felix’s own, forgot himself and reality for that last intimacy they would share for nine years. 

Here on this field, in the middle of a war, Felix ends this drought. He holds Dimitri tighter, spreads his fingers to cover the span of his back, stabilizes the shaking of the boy’s shoulders and tangles his other hand into sweat damp hair. Felix wants to tell him that it will be okay, but it will not be. Not for a very long time. Felix cannot even guarantee if it ever will be again, can only hope it will. Can only trust that it will, have faith that it will - at a certain point, there is nothing else left to do. He had to make his choice, so here he is. 

That was the point of all of  _ this _ , was it not? 

Dimitri is gasping beneath him, crying out with desperate little noises, hands scrabbling at Felix’s cloak, his belts, his scabbards, reaching for something that Felix will never know, that he wishes he could give. But Felix has nothing to offer but himself in all the ways he should have so long ago. 

So he holds Dimitri. Felix lets him cry, lets him shake and scream and thrash and desperately tug Felix closer, so unsure of what he wants, of what this world wants from him. For now, at least, it seems what Dimitri wants is Felix. So here he will stay. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings:  
> If you would like to skip the section with the description of a self harm wound, it begins with: “A boy - a young man, really - sits at the edge of one of the beds” and ends with “Felix’s vision is darkening as he struggles for breath, but his grip does not falter.” The rest of the chapter does consistently discuss and allude to self harm and suicidal thoughts, but that is the only section with graphic description. 
> 
> A significant portion of this chapter, as well as additional future chapters of this fic, are repurposed from an old Academy Era fic that I wrote but ended up not working out. I've sat on my thoughts regarding Dimitri and cutting for basically a year now, and have never really gotten to explore it before, so I am grateful to have had this opportunity to do so. My twitter username (@cntrlvaneau) is a reference to BTS' Tomorrow (Every single day is a repetition of Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) and my firm belief that tomorrow will not always be a repeat of today, and that progress is possible. Yes. The time loop is a metaphor. Yes, in my Silent Hill AU. Sentimental layers, folks. (Also, I do highly recommend Tomorrow for all my MI friends - then follow it up with Paradise. Love you all.) 
> 
> Also to my fellow Silent Hill fans - yes the opening scene is the mirror room scene with Angela from Silent Hill 2. 
> 
> Massive thank you to V (@bumblevetr) for her stunning art for this chapter which she literally drew up in the past couple of days on essentially whim. Just incredible talent. Also her life saving betaing lol. And huge thank you as always to my cheerleader and beta Rin (@wintersrose616), they are both wonderful authors in their own right and I cannot recommend them enough.
> 
> If you have enjoyed this chapter or this fic, comments and feedback are much appreciated. Each are cherished and I will reply once I find the words! Thank you all for reading.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings apply to this chapter!
> 
> This was written to Clair de Lune, which I highly recommend as listening for this chapter.

Minutes pass, hours, perhaps. Time is of no concern to Felix, not when death no longer is. 

The Goddess herself could not part Felix from Dimitri, could not end their embrace, the protection and relief Felix sought so desperately to provide the boy. But, in the end, it is not the Goddess that walks carefully into the corner of his vision, that awaits his attention with polite disinterest and practiced poise. 

It is Fleche von Bergliez. Braided brown pigtails tied with bows to match her eyes, in a linen summer dress of the same color. She looks as if she was just passing through to the market, on the way to have lunch along the canal. With her brother, perhaps. The last time he saw her, she was dressed in brown fatigues, cast in bronze and scarlet in the setting sun and her own blood. 

Despite her being the ghost among the living, dressed for a trip to town rather than war, it is Felix rather who feels out of place. Dimitri is gone now, as swiftly and more silent than how he appeared. His departure does not strike the chord of terror in Felix he thought it would. This is how it was supposed to be, how time begins to move again. They will meet again.

As for Fleche, for the young Lady von Bergliez, he knew nothing of her till she killed his father. Saw her corpse by his, pale and fragile and so terribly small. At first, Felix could not believe that of all things, of all their many enemies in this world, his father was felled by a child whose name Felix did not even know. Byleth has to give him the facts, Caspar the backstory.  _ Then, _ it was easy to believe. 

Revenge, of course. Always revenge. Is that why she is here now? 

“Are you here to kill me?”

What a strange thing to ask someone who is dead, but such things seem not to matter much anymore. The linen dress would be fucking strange attire for death transcending murder though. 

“I have a letter for you,” Fleche says, the dead girl who murdered his father says, “From your father.” 

The dead girl who killed his father has a letter from his father, who she killed.  _ What the fuck. _

“My father who you killed, you mean.” 

The girl stares at him: “It was not your father that I was trying to kill.”

Felix clenches his fists at his side, “No, it was not.”

“Seems like you blame your King more than me.”

“I do not.”

“Truly?”

Felix thinks about it. Then he answers, honestly, if for once: “Truly.”

“Then who do you blame?”

“Your Emperor. Faerghus. The Church. The entirety of Fodlan, at this point.”

“Are they to blame for my brother’s death as well?”

“Yes. And you are not the only one who lost a brother.”

“Are you going to do something about it?”

Now, is that not the question? Rather than answering, Felix sits down on the cobblestone in the Central Square of Enbarr in the middle of an invasion. The stone is warm beneath him, sun soaked and chasing the chill from his bones. Fleche watches him impassively from her new position above him, hands clasped around a sealed letter. 

The wax seal beneath her finger tips is a dark teal. Felix does not need to see more to know the insignia emblazoned upon it, to remember the hundreds of times he watched his father press his signet ring into warm wax in such a fluid, practiced motion that Felix never was able to replicate. 

“From my father you said?” 

Fleche looks down at him, nods: “Yes.” 

Felix is tired, “Why doesn’t he just come here himself? Since apparently it doesn’t matter if you’re alive or dead anymore. Or is he too afraid to face me?” 

Fleche looks unimpressed.

“You are the one that is afraid, Felix.” 

Felix swallows. 

Fleche sighs, “I have to go now. I do not want to be here at the end. Will you take the letter?” 

She extends the letter out to him. It looks like every other one his father sent him. He takes it wordlessly, tracing the grooves of his crest with his finger tip. Fleche turns to leave, to go where, Felix is not quite sure. She cannot be older than fifteen he thinks. Dimitri’s age when he became a murderer. Younger than Glenn when he died. And now she will never be another year older. 

“Fleche,” he calls out to her back, and she turns to face him one last time, braids swaying in the breeze, “I am sorry.” 

She smiles softly. She is sweet when she smiles, he thinks. That smile does not belong here. 

“I am sorry too, Felix. But that does not mean I forgive any of you.”

“No,” Felix agrees, “it does not.” 

She walks away, and is gone. 

Felix is left with the letter. His hands do not shake when he opens it. 

He reads. 

_ Dear Felix,  _

_ I am sorry to have left you, as your brother and mother have. I am sorry to leave you alone, even if you have felt alone so long before my death. And that, my dear son, is my greatest regret. I have many, but that is the foremost. Apologies from a dead man mean little to you, I imagine. _

_ I left you alone. We all did, in some way or another. _

_ My dearest Felix, my sweet son. How I miss you. I miss eating meals with you, observing your lessons, tucking you into bed at night - the precious grace of having you beside me throughout the day. I miss sitting by the fire through snowstorms, watching you devour training manuals and peppering Glenn with questions. I miss catching you late at night in the training yard perfecting your forms, the guilt in your expression that never was able to override your determination. I miss your letters, every report, your wit and sharp insight never failing to make me laugh or provide invaluable knowledge. _

_ I miss your tears, your smiles, and everything in between. _

_ Even in death, I miss you, I worry for you.  _

_ Even death itself cannot stop a parent from worrying, I am afraid. _

_ Just as I missed Glenn, I miss you. _

_ I did not know how to provide you comfort. I did not know how to make the memory of your brother, of my son, something cherished and not something painful. I tried, and I failed. _

_ I did not understand… no, I could not bring myself to understand your hatred of our traditions, because I clung to them so bitterly as a comfort. And so, what was a balm to me, was a poison to you.  _

_ I did not realize this until it was too late, until I drove you so far from my reach. _

_ I am so sorry, Felix, Goddess above I cannot even begin to express the sorrow that weighs upon me for failing you so terribly at the time when you needed me most. I tried to find sense in Glenn’s death even if there was none. I needed it to be able to get up in the morning. To face you each day, to face the memory of your mother. _

_ I killed her son, you see.  _

_ I remember... I remember holding your small hand in mine, watching Glenn train and realizing... what monster of a father am I for raising these hands to shed blood. To take lives. To expect your life to be taken in return. My sweet sons... I had such thoughts even then and yet never spared you nor he from the fate I so dreaded… Regret is far too simple a word for such a punishment.  _

_ I can imagine your great anger at me expressing such a sentiment, that I believe myself responsible for the death of your brother. Your offense at Dimitri’s bearing the burdens of the dead make that much clear to me. _

_ If you will humor me, your father, I have one last lesson I wish to impart upon you, that I should have done so long before my death. _

_ People do terrible things to survive, my son. Living is no easy thing. The simple thought of course, is a thief that steals to feed his family. What is not so simple a thought, is what the mind and body do to protect one’s heart and soul. To survive grief, or fear, or rage, humans are capable of truly terrible things. But even more difficult than the act of survival itself - is learning how to live, instead. I am afraid I taught you how to do neither, not properly. _

_ In order to live, one must, in no certain order, forgive yourself of the actions you took to survive, and make amends for the harm those actions caused. _

_ And so, in death, I am doing my best to live. I send this letter to you to seek forgiveness, Felix. Ten years ago, I made a choice of how to survive through the worst chapter of my life. That choice hurt you so deeply, Felix, and the infection still eats away at you even now. For ten years, I did not seek your forgiveness, nor was I able to give myself as much.  _

_ I feel as though I have no right to express my deep pride in the man you have become, as I question to what extent I deserve any credit for your accomplishments. You are, like any man, not without your shortcomings. But you are a good man, and with time and care, you could easily be a great one. That much has been clear to me since your birth.  _

_ Part of what will make you a great man, Felix, is that you will be nothing like your father. _

_ Do not make my same mistakes Felix, do not regret the choices you made to survive for so long that you have no chance to live before you die.  _

_ One last note before I say my final goodbyes. I know that you loved me. Please read those words, my son. I know that you loved me, and I know how much you loved me. I worry I did not express my love to Glenn and your mother before they left us, and I know fear that you feel the same - because I do know you loved me, Felix.  _

_ You would not have kept writing if you did not. _

_ And so, my dear son, do your best to defy every tradition we have set forth with which you disagree, and cut your own path forward. Believe in yourself, if in nothing else.  _

_ Until we meet again, _

_ Your father. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually the first coherent section I wrote for this fic, and it's the first time I've really written Rodrigue. I hope I did him justice! I have a lot of feelings about grief, forgiveness, regret, things left unsaid - and I tried to do my best to infuse them in this chapter, along with some thoughts about mental illness & trauma and all of the many things that are not addressed in 3h... This is just like My Thoughts About F3H Character Grief & Trauma jammed into a weird death transcending interaction and letter haha I hope you liked it & made you feel something (please let me know if it did :pleading:)
> 
> Thank you again to my lovely artist & beta V (@bumblevetr) and my beta & emotional support Rin (@wintersrose616).
> 
> If you enjoyed this chapter, or any part of the fic, please do leave me a comment letting me know your thoughts! Nothing makes me happier <3 Thank you very much for reading! Take care of yourselves and follow Rodrigue's advice.


End file.
